The Sky Is Crying is motivated by the recent overwhelming natural disaster in the southern Gulf coast and southeast Asia, which was exacerbated by incompetence, blatant disregard, and the reactions of austere theodicy and spurious theology when attempting to explain the unexplainable. Scholars, clergy, and activists respond to the underlying sociocultural, historical, religious, and ethical issues that underlie and address these natural (exacerbated by man-made) events, and unpack the larger "elephants in the room": the intersection of poverty and race, and the related systemic injustices in America, in the world, and throughout history.

Why do the poor and ethnic minorities bear the brunt of both natural and political disaster? More than twenty contributors address this question from historical, social, political, ethical, biblical, and religious perspectives, and they expose the long-standing social and theological issues that are larger than any one tragic event. This cadre of renowned contributors sets the subject in the broader context of history, analyzes several ancient and modern case studies, and offers an invaluable resource for scholarly study and classroom discussion.

To read the Introduction click here

The Sky is Crying

Race, Class, and Natural DisasterBy Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2006 The United Methodist Publishing House
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-687-33473-5

Chapter One

Retribution as First Response: Did God Punish New Orleans?

Valerie Bridgeman Davis

There are hurricanes in the world as well as lilies. —Abraham J. Heschel

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, as a Category 4–strength storm, took a brutal sideswipe at the coastal region of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Except for a last-minute turn, the storm would have hit the city of New Orleans dead-on. For a brief few hours, a sigh of relief filled the news that, although the coast would be devastated, the city had not completely come to ruin. But then unrelenting rains came. And those who could not or would not evacuate the city found themselves in the midst of cataclysmic—some might say apocalyptic—death throes. The storm surge and ensuing floodwaters that breached the levee and caused other damage "made Katrina the most destructive and costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States." Eighty percent of the city of New Orleans lay underwater. More than one million people were displaced by the storm. The effects of the storm, including tornadoes that spawned from it, were reported in as many as seven states.

In this essay, I examine the ways in which theologians, religious leaders, and others spoke about the why of the hurricanes in the weeks immediately following them. I categorize these conversations into the historic theological language regarding theodicy and retribution. Examining the rise of a pietistic faith that is less justice oriented among some African American Christians, I raise questions about the implications of such faith as it relates to theological understandings about God's behavior in the presence of natural disasters. Finally, I seek to offer a biocritical, womanist response that stands in resistance to any systems of thought or belief that blame victims, or that hold the deity culpable without rigorous pursuit of justice.

Setting the Stage: The Emerging Sermon in Context

The Sunday after the floods settled water and woe into New Orleans and all our lives, I was scheduled to preach at my home congregation in Memphis, Tennessee. Because I do not preach regularly, I had been working on a sermon a couple of weeks; but Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing floods, and bumbling governmental and rescue agencies' responses, meant the sermon had to change. What would I preach? What would anyone else preach? I teach preaching and worship, and in both my Preaching from the Prophets and my Introduction to Theology of Preaching and Worship courses, I scrapped my lesson plans and talked with students about the coming Sunday morning. I wanted to know how worship and sermons were going to be shaped in the face of the twenty-four-hour, nonstop pictures of misery and pain or ineptitude and insensitivity that were unfolding before our eyes on CNN, Fox News Channel, and other news outlets. Like most of the people I know, I was glued to the television and to Internet sites. I stayed in contact with family and friends who were directly affected by the storm and its aftermath. Feelings of helplessness gave way to feelings of frustration, fear, and outright anger. Hearing United States citizens referred to as "refugees" incensed me long before someone said that I should be angry. I was shell-shocked and traumatized; and I was miles away from the epicenter of the traumatic drama. I can only imagine, and not very well, what people in the midst of the sorrow and suffering experienced.

I eventually wrote a sermon based on Psalm 11 titled "What Can the Righteous Do?" I decided the sermon needed to help people lament and address the displacement and disillusionment that the storm blew into our hearts and lives. I believed deeply that people needed permission to question and to curse, if need be; to help us ritually, and really allow us to cry and address the feelings of despondency and despair. I gave voice to what we were actually seeing: black, poor, older faces staring back at us from video clips. I lifted up stories I had heard or read of black men, especially those who were protecting and providing for their friends and families in the face of the worst of worst situations, in antithesis to visuals of looting or "thugging" young black men. I pointed out that storms were washing to the surface this country's blighted record of dealing unjustly with poor people, with elderly people, with people of color. Along with my godson, I sang "Come Ye Disconsolate" after the sermon. We prayed with people from the coastlines who were present, or with family members of people in the area. After the sermon, several of these "evacuees" came up to me and thanked me for both validating their feelings and for giving them hope. Such responses are what preachers hope for after they preach.

Calling for the Question: Why?

The devastation begged a question: why? Why were the seas, the weather, and Mother Nature turning on the Gulf Coast? Why was God angry enough to decimate the area and to start the massive migration of humanity, the likes of which have not been seen in the United States since the Great Depression? Efforts to make sense of the devastation and the human misery, and the poverty and lack uncovered by the storm, began almost as soon as the storm hit. Official websites, bloggers, denominational mission leaders, and others sought ways to help people cope. The loss was not just that of those on the coastline, but of those who had friends, colleagues, and family members in the region. For many African Americans whose roots are in the South, it was an assault on history and memory. Black faces peopled newscasts and suddenly the story was not just about the devastation of the storm, but about the slow response of federal, state, and local governments and the seeming indifference to poor people who could not evacuate the city for various reasons. There were reports of disparities in treatment between white New Orleans citizens and people of color; reports of surrounding cities refusing New Orleans residents entry into their towns; the displacement and separation of family members from one another; and the horrific pictures from the Superdome and the city convention center. How could we know the difference between reality and urban legend? Conversations about race and class took center stage as the television images showed face after face of poor, elderly, black people in New Orleans. A city built on jazz, food, and tourism, had—for the most part—been adept at hiding its poverty and its racial divide. But by mid-September, Katrina and its aftermath had swept away all the hiding places.

In that milieu, questions about God's wrath, of theodicy, and of human sinfulness as causative agents for these natural disasters (the hurricane and the flooding) emerged. Was God repaying evil for human evil? Was the deity giving an eye for an eye? If Walter Brueggemann is right that retribution is "the assumption or conviction that the world is ordered by God so that everyone receives a fair outcome of reward or punishment commensurate with his or her conduct," the people who believe such must concur that everyone who suffered because of Hurricane Katrina deserved what he or she got. This belief holds that there is always reasonable order in creation, or what Brueggemann calls "moral coherence." This system is evident in prophetic rhetoric, and in the...