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One of the recurring themes in public discussions about major disasters resulting in large-scale losses of life, both natural and human-caused, is the notion that they reflect God's judgment on a sinful populace. In 2005, some evangelical Christian leaders blamed the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina on that city's supposed tolerance of orgies and homosexuality, for example. The Reverend Franklin Graham (son of the late Reverend Billy Graham) described New Orleans as one wicked city with a black spiritual cloud hanging over it. They believe God is going to use that storm to bring revival, he said at the time. Similar sentiments have been attributed to Billy Graham's daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, with regard to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed nearly 3,000 people. During a 2016 radio interview, Lotz said God allows bad things like 9/11 to happen because the United States is basically abandoning God as a culture and as a nation. Some of the contemporaneous press coverage of Lotz's remarks employed headlines that misrepresented the tone and tenor of what she actually said, however. For example, an article on the website DeadState was headlined Billy Graham’s Daughter: '9/11 Was God’s Punishment for Trans People, Evolution, and Secularism,' while the article itself reported that: Similarly, the Huffington Post ran a story with a headline declaring that (according to Lotz) God Sends Terror Attacks Because of Bathroom Rights and Evolution, but the body of the article couched her comments in somewhat different terms: Although both articles accurately quoted Lotz's statements, their headlines were misleading. At no point did Lotz claim that God sends terror attacks, nor did she claim that 9/11 was God's punishment for America's acceptance of transgender people, evolution, or secularism. She did, on the other hand, assert a direct connection between those social phenomena (which she characterized as proof of America abandoning God) and God withdrawing his protection from America, hence allowing catastrophic events to happen. Here are transcripts of the relevant portions of the interview (based on audio files hosted by the website Right Wing Watch): On 9/11: We’re struggling with our own pride or self-sufficiency. I think that’s why God allows bad things to happen. I think that’s why He would allow 9/11 to happen, or the dreadful attack in San Bernardino, or some of these other places, to show us that we need Him. We’re desperate without Him. On Transgender People:: There is silliness, there is craziness, there’s the most illogical rulings. The one in North Carolina on HB2, which is to protect our children in bathrooms and locker rooms, has become something where the Justice Department is suing us for something that’s just common sense. On Evolution: Romans I describes a person or a nation that refuses to acknowledge God as God, refuses to thank God, exchanges Him, or worship of Him, for four-footed creatures or animals, which is basically evolution, so that we're saying there is no God, we're not accountable to God, we're not going anywhere, we came from nothing. And then you begin this downward spiral away from God. On Secularism and America's Abandonment of God: Some critics will still object to Lotz's theological interpretation of these events, but such disputes are more legitimately founded on what was actually said than on contentious misrepresentations of what was said. Full Disclosure: The author of the DeadState article referenced above is the brother of a Snopes staff member.
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