I never thought I’d say the names Sharon Stone and John Hagee in the same sentence, but in this media age, the lines between bombastic televangelist and beauteous Hollywood celebrity are blurring. At a Cannes Film Festival press conference there she was, Sharon Stone, offering her views on the earthquakes in China. “And all these earthquakes and stuff happened and I thought: Is that karma … when you are not nice that bad things happen to you?” she intoned. A Hollywood celebrity moving into televangelist territory? Just a week earlier we saw reruns of John Hagee explaining why Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans _ a gay pride parade, he said. Jesus, by contrast, was philosophical and evenhanded about the weather, saying, “God makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” But his words are unconvincing to Stone, Hagee and Robertson, who see divine retribution at work in nature’s ways.

(Dick Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (http://www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at www.dickstaub.com.)