Washington • It’s that season again. An ominous swirl forms in the Atlantic, citizens batten down or evacuate, TV weather reporters put on rain slickers and, as predictably as National Weather Service bulletins, some End-Times pastors and other provocateurs on the right attribute the storm to a wrathful God’s vengeance on liberals.
The storm surge has already washed up Jim Bakker, whose televangelism never quite recovered from his sex scandal and prison sentence for fraud. After Hurricane Harvey, he declared that “this flood is from God,” punishment for the former mayor of Houston attempting to subpoena ministers’ sermons.