c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) 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 was Stone, in all her radiant glory, offering her views on the earthquakes in China. The insights we were all waiting for; who knew they would be theological?

“Well you know it was very interesting because at first, you know, I am not happy about the ways the Chinese were treating the Tibetans because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else. And so I have been very concerned about how to think and what to do about that because I don’t like that.

“And I had been this, you know, concerned about, oh how should we deal with the Olympics because they are not being nice to the Dalai Lama, who is a good friend of mine.

“And all these earthquake and stuff happened and I thought: Is that karma … when you are not nice that bad things happen to you?”

What’s this, I thought, a Hollywood celebrity moving into televangelist territory?

Just a week earlier, we saw reruns of John Hagee explaining why Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. “Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans. New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God” and a gay pride parade had been scheduled for the day Katrina made landfall.

Stone and Hagee, of course, are amateurs compared to Pat Robertson, the undisputed champion of connecting weather patterns and the Almighty. He is a multiple threat _ able to predict, interpret and cause changes in the meteorological world.

In 1998, city officials in Orlando, Fla., voted to fly rainbow flags from lampposts during the annual Gay Days event at Disney World. Robertson warned, “I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you. … (A) condition like this will bring about the destruction of our nation. It’ll bring about terrorist bombs, it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.”

Back in 1985, Robertson claimed that his prayers helped steer Hurricane Gloria away from the Virginia Beach headquarters of his Christian Broadcasting Network. On live satellite TV, he railed at the storm, “We command you to stop where you are and move northeast, away from land, and away from harm.”

Unfortunately, though sparing Virginia, the Almighty evidently failed to hear the “away from land” part as the redirected Gloria devastated Long Island and parts of New England.

Jesus, on the other hand, was philosophical and evenhanded about the weather. “God makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust,” he said. But Jesus’ words are unconvincing to Stone, Hagee and Robertson, who see divine retribution at work in nature’s ways.

Stone speaks of karma. Hagee opines, “All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.”

If power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, add to this formula the special quirks of power acquired through the ephemeral, artificial world of media and you have power grounded not in substance but in known-ness, whether springing from entertainment or religious media.

This unbearable lightness combined with hubris extends beyond the mere interpretation of natural disasters into the disastrous world of politics, where celebrities and televangelists alike seem irrepressibly drawn to weighing in on matters unrelated to their expertise.

It is a sad day when Hollywood celebrities and televangelebrities are equally unreliable as guides to contemplation of weather, politics or God.

I could say more, but in the words of Sharon Stone, “I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else,” and I fear a storm with my name on it may be heading this way.

(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 http://www.dickstaub.com)

KRE/RB END STAUB

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