It is disheartening in a time when people call on their religious faith to give them peace about a calamity as frightening as the coronavirus outbreak that a Cleveland, Tennessee, televangelist would describe the outbreak as God’s retribution for the United States allowing abortion and same-sex marriage.
Such comments – among the many he has made about the virus, its causes and its prophecy – give faith in God and the work of modern-day religious institutions a bad name. Why, after all, would someone with no faith or someone weak in faith believe or continue to believe in a loving and caring God after hearing a claim that is so patently ridiculous?
If what Perry Stone said were true, why has it killed and sickened so many not in the United States? Why isn’t it primarily hitting those who have undergone abortions or who are in same-sex marriages? And why should people of faith not believe that all sicknesses and diseases are God’s retribution for one thing or another?
People of faith can and do have disagreements about abortion and same-sex marriage, and whether the law should allow them. That’s understandable.
What’s not understandable confusing or misleading people about a pandemic about which news and information already come so fast that it is hard to keep up.