What do homosexuality, health care reform, and British advertising standards all have in common? They’re all things that have ticked God off, some religious leaders say, and he’s venting his frustration with the angry fires of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano.
Moscow’s Interfax newswire reported that the Association of (Russian) Orthodox Experts blamed the April 14 eruption — whose gigantic cloud of ash grounded transatlantic flights for more than a week — on gay rights in Europe and Iceland’s tolerance of “neo-paganism.”Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh, meanwhile, said God was angry over health care reform. San Antonio megachurch pastor John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel, said God was unleashing his wrath on Britain for deciding that Israeli tourism ads actually featured parts of the disputed Palestinian territories, not Israel.
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Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi recently told his Shiite Muslim followers that immodestly dressed and promiscuous women are to blame for earthquakes.
Read it all in RNS.
(We’ll leave for others to debate whether Limbaugh is a religious leader.)
Some set out to disprove Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi’s hypothesis. The results are in.