As hurricane Irma bears down on Florida, two groups are praising the impending destruction, the Left and ISIS. There are those on the Left praying to a God they likely don’t believe in to destroy Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and Hollywood’s Jennifer Lawrence opining that Irma is mother nature’s revenge for Trump dismissing climate change. And we have also have, lining up on the same side, ISIS, excitedly declaring, “May Allah drown the enemies of Islam and force them into their knees subdued, and humiliated, defeated, and scattered!” and “Due to the threat of storm millions of people from Florida are displaced from their homes. O Crusaders! This is the reward of your crimes against Muslims. Do not forget it.”
It might seem that the Left is a bit more empathetic, but if you really think about the incalculable destruction the hurricane will visit on a big chunk of Florida, it seems as if the Left is quite happy to let Irma deliver immeasurable destruction to needle Trump and to feel the satisfaction of witnessing what appears to be evidence for climate change.
ISIS and the Left have too much in common here, more than you think. As I show in my The Reformation 500 Years Later: 12 Things You Need To Know, if you follow back the history of the secular Left to a hundred years before the Protestant Reformation began in 1517, and Islam back to the 600s, you find that both shared a deep antipathy to Christianity.
The Left’s hostility to Trump is really part of its larger, deeper half-millennium-plus antagonism to anything that stands in the way of secular “progressive” emancipation from all remnants of the Christian moral framework.
ISIS’s cry of victory at the hurricane is merely a continuation of its centuries-long attempt to destroy the infidel and his civilization. If we understand that history, we will find its celebration of Irma as quite predictable.
Jennifer Lawrence’s belief—shared by many—that Irma settles the argument about climate change is more complex because the whole debate about climate change is far, far more complicated than either the Left or Right realizes (a point I detail in my In Defense of Nature). That having been noted, there seems to be a perverse kind of satisfaction that the horrible destruction of Irma might function as an “I told you so” to the Right. Some even think the destruction laughable, if it hits Christians. Witness the Politico cartoon by the very liberal cartoonist, Matt Wuerker, that appeared after Harvey hit Texas, mocking Texas Christians amidst the destruction of the hurricane.
The important point is that all this is nothing new, either by the Left or Islam. Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, are under attack from the Left and Islam, and have been for 500-years. That’s a good reason for both Catholics and Protestants to band together, and bring about a new Reformation, one that works for Christian unity so that we may together face those who are trying to destroy all of us.
Benjamin Wiker is Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow of the Veritas Center at Franciscan University. His newest book is The Reformation 500 Years Later: 12 Things You Need To Know. His website is www.benjaminwiker.com, and you can follow him on Facebook.