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Letter from America

Such a sweet name

Katrina did her worst. For many years geologists have predicted that the Mardi Gras city of New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. Situated between a river, a lake and the ocean, New Orleans is also significantly beneath sea level. There are levees (like the Dutch dikes) which exist to prevent the city from being swallowed by the sea. The old French settlers discovered that the city went under water in the summer and so built their houses on stilts.

Despite all such man-made attempts to turn back the basic rules of nature, hurricane Katrina, a force four, ripped through the barriers and destroyed a famous city at the end of August. The news and the pictures and the stories coming out of the area are simply horrific. Not now is there simply the natural disaster (of biblical proportions as one secular commentator noted), but there is also the human chaos inflicted on a society broken down, and rumours and eyewitness accounts of brutality and looting begin to abound.

One is moved to tears, or wrath, or confusion (how could this happen to the most powerful nation in the world?), or maybe simply silence.

Injustice

In the midst of the frenzy to ‘do something’ and ‘do something quick’, the details of the socioeconomic and racial make up of the survivors are beginning to appear shocking. New Orleans not only appears like a city in Africa because of the crazed frenzy of the disaster; the faces that appear on our TV screens are also almost entirely African-American. What is going on? Did only the white people evacuate? Are the old economic/class divisions still segregated (for all practical purposes) by and large by race? Can we imagine a situation where you are told to evacuate but are simply unable to afford a bus ticket to get out? No wonder people are angry. A pastor in Harlem has begun to scream pretty loud about injustice.

Climate change

Then there are other reflections too. Is it ironic that an administration which has denied the likelihood of global climate change could be so thoroughly undone by what appears to be a force of (new) nature, not only now red in tooth and claw, but hot with rage too?

It is easy to criticise. Some have complained that Bush was still on vacation on the day the storm hit. Well, no one knew how bad it was going to be, or whether it would hit, until it did hit. Others have wondered publicly about the speed, or lack thereof, of the response. Well, mobilising troops, medication, etc., etc., is not simply a matter of political will, it is also an issue of logistical (yes, on this scale no doubt also bureaucratic) manoeuvers. And, of course there’s that little thing called Iraq, which apparently has quite a few of America’s resources tied up too.

More important than caviling is action. Numerous relief organisations sped to the scene. Can we give to help? Even more important than action is repentance. For while Britain may rest easy in never in living memory having experienced a natural disaster on this scale, Jesus’s words about the tower of Siloam know no bounds: ‘Do you think they were more guilty than all the others… I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish’ (Luke 13.4-5).

In an age where moral relativism rules, a perfect storm humbles the proud, disempowers the most powerful, and is ever a call to us all to realise that in one storm, if not this, we will have to find a rock on which to stand and survive, and the coming judgement of God is going to make Katrina look like a sweet little girl.

Josh Moody