With bushfires raging through Australia as a result of the climate crisis, you knew a pastor somewhere would take the opportunity to come up with an alternative explanation for all the destruction.

Enter Christian hate-preacher Steven Anderson of Arizona’s (independent fundamentalist) Faithful Word Baptist Church, who not coincidentally was banned from stepping foot in Australia last July.

Anderson blames the bushfires on the country “banning and deporting preachers of the Gospel.”

We know he’s the one who got banned. The one who got deported is his buddy Logan Robertson, a pastor from New Zealand whose visa was revoked last year after he harassed a group of peaceful Muslims at their mosque.

Anderson also linked to an old sermon in which he claimed natural disasters were judgments from God, as if the most religious nations on Earth were somehow immune from devastation. It’s an explanation that defies reality. These kinds of disasters will only rise in number and strength if leaders continue ignoring the science of climate change and refuse to take action to mitigate it. We can’t say we didn’t see it coming.

(Featured image via Shutterstock)

