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“I think [it] is tembatsu (divine punishment), although I feel sorry for disaster victims,” said a leading Japanese politician after that country was hit by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and a tsunami in March 2011.

When more than 220,000 people were killed in the earthquake that hit Haiti in January 2010, a prominent televangelist claimed that it was because they “swore a pact to the devil” and needed to have a “turning to god.”

“God wants to awaken our deaden[ed] and indifferent conscience,” declared a Catholic priest when 79 people died in a stampede in Manila, Philippines. A newspaper there reported that “twenty-one percent of adults believe God is unleashing his wrath with landslides, typhoons and other disasters” that frequently pummel the country.