Hurricane Katrina as a Providential Catastrophe

Throughout history, humans have struggled to make sense of catastrophic events and to find some meaning or purpose in the destruction and loss of life they cause. In the Christian West, cataclysm has historically been ascribed to the wrath of God---the prototype here is the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah---but such events have also prompted grave religious doubts. How can a good God foment or permit the destruction of innocents? Famously, believers and skeptics across the European world debated the implications of the devastating Lisbon earthquake of 1755.  We might assume a broad contemporary consensus in the West that natural calamities are in fact natural events whose explanation falls in the realm of science, which lack supernatural causation, and which thus need encompass no intelligible meaning. It is nevertheless striking that the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina provoked a broad array of providential interpretations. According to some early commentators, divine punishment had been meted out to New Orleans for its wicked ways, or the fecklessness of its inhabitants, or its corrupt politicians. Equally interesting, and more persistent, are the interpretations of the storm as a tormented baptism into rebirth for the city. From the earliest days, some in the city and outside complacently observed that the floodwaters had swept away many of the entrenched problems of New Orleans, and heralded the coming revival of a city shorn of a despised poor and criminal population, or alternatively of a smug elite whose diffidence and inattention had let the city slide into decay. Related to these views were the oft-expressed notion that for many New Orleanians, being driven into exile from their dysfunctional city was the boon of a lifetime. Clearly there were strong racialist elements to these arguments, but their echoes continue to resound in more respectable quarters.