Are theologically inclined people a hazard in high offices?

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Astronauts typically express awe and even love for the beautiful Earth below while they’re in orbit. I wonder how they feel when seeing such raging, massive blazes as the firestorm viciously consuming a large swathe of Los Angeles, and knowing that the air is being choked with health-damaging particulates? Or worse, the huge fires frequently ravaging the Amazon Rainforest?

Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro had recklessly allowed the rainforest to be razed by both meat producers and wildfires. Incredibly, in the midst of yet another unprecedented wildfire during the summer of 2019, the evangelical Christian president declared that his presidency – and, I presume, all of the formidable environmental damage he inflicted while in power – is somehow divine: “It is difficult to be president of Brazil because it is a president that has less authority. I am fulfilling a mission from God.”

Interestingly enough, though not surprising, early on November 6 Donald Trump stated: “Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason. And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”

Canada’s former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who also is an evangelical Christian, was unrelenting in his pro-fossil fuel/anti-natural environment war against science.

There also is a belief held by much of conservative ‘Christianity’ that to defend the natural environment from the planet’s greatest polluters, notably the fossil fuel industry, is to go against God’s will and is therefore inherently evil. Many even credit the bone-dry vegetation areas uncontrollably burning in California, seemingly every year, to some divine wrath upon that state’s collective liberal sinfulness.

Perhaps there’s a serious hazard in such theologically inclined people getting into high office?

FRANK STERLE, JR

White Rock, BC

Canada