"New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness," Erwin wrote this week in a column he distributes to news outlets. "It is the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of God."
After touring Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., and Bayou La Batre, Ala., Erwin said he was awed and humbled by the power of the storm. But he wasn't surprised.
"Warnings year after year by godly evangelists and preachers went unheeded. So why were we surprised when finally the hand of judgment fell?" Erwin wrote. "Sadly, innocents suffered along with the guilty. Sin always brings suffering to good people as well as the bad."
William Willimon, bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, took exception with the state senator's analysis.
"I have no idea what sort of senator or politician Mr. Erwin is, but he's sure no theologian," Willimon said. "I'm certainly against gambling and its hold on state government in Mississippi, but I expect there is as much sin, of possibly a different order, in Montevallo as on the Gulf Coast. If God punished all of us for our sin, who could stand?"
Erwin, a former conservative talk-radio host and now a media consultant and senator, is not alone in seeing God's wrath at work in the storms.
The al-Qaida in Iraq group hailed the hurricane deaths in America as the "wrath of God," and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan suggested the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was divine punishment for the violence America had inflicted on Iraq.
Televangelist Pat Robertson said Katrina might be linked to God's judgment concerning legalized abortion, and some rabbis suggested Katrina was retribution for supporting the Israeli pullout from Gaza.
Erwin said some hurricane victims were not singled out for harsh punishment but merely in the way of God's judgment.
"If you are a believer and read the Bible, you know sin has judgment," Erwin said. "New Orleans has always been know for sin. ... The wages of sin is death."
