Rev. Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans, also sees God’s mercy in the aftermath of Katrina — but in a different way. Shanks says the hurricane has wiped out much of the rampant sin common to the city.
The pastor explains that for years he has warned people that unless Christians in New Orleans took a strong stand against such things as local abortion clinics, the yearly Mardi Gras celebrations, and the annual event known as “Southern Decadence” — an annual six-day “gay pride” event scheduled to be hosted by the city this week — God’s judgment would be felt.
“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion — it’s free of all of those things now,” Shanks says. “God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there — and now we’re going to start over again.”
My impression from googling around is that this Shanks character is a bit of a junior Fred Phelps… He’s been predicting exactly this for a while:
Bill Shanks, pastor of the New Covenant Fellowship in Kenner, said the legalization and sanctioning of same-sex marriages could lead to a present-day Sodom and Gomorrah, cities whose destruction was described in the Bible as punishment for the people’s sinfulness, according to the pastor. “One Category 5 hurricane coming up the river will take care of all sodomite marriages,” Shanks said. “I believe this will open the floodgate for God to bring judgment on our land.”
Of course, Shanks was predicting the hurricane if Louisiana failed to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The amendment passed by a wide margin, but I guess in Shanks’s eyes that was insufficient to placate the Almighty…
Phelps himself, the very pope of hate himself, has a page titled “Thank God for Katrina.” I can’t even bring myself to link to it.