It was a blessing for me to encounter the theologian Austin Farrer a year before his sudden death. With him, I was one handshake away from his friends Tolkien, Lewis, and Sayers. In reflecting on natural disasters and God’s action in the world, he said with stark realism that in an earthquake, God’s will is that the elements of the Earth’s crust should behave in accordance with their nature. He was speaking of the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, which killed about the same number of people counted so far in devastated Haiti. Most were killed in churches on All Saints Day, which gave license to rationalists of the “Enlightenment” to mock the doctrine of a good God. Atheists can suddenly pretend to be theologians puzzled by the contradictory behavior of a benevolent God. On the other extreme, doltish TV evangelists summon a half-baked Calvinism to say that people who get hit hard deserve it.

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The only people who would seem to have the right to invoke God at the moment are the Haitians themselves, who beseech his help amidst dreadful pain. They, too, alas, appear to wander the wasteland of theodicy. News reports have described some Haitians giving voice to a worldview uncomfortably close to Pat Robertson’s, in which a vengeful God has been meting out justified retribution: “I blame man. God gave us nature, and we Haitians, and our governments, abused the land. You cannot get away without consequences,” one man told The Times last week.

Others sound like a more frankly theological President Obama: a 27-year-old survivor, Mondésir Raymone, was quoted thus: “We have survived by the grace of God.” Bishop Éric Toussaint, standing near his damaged cathedral, said something similar: “Why give thanks to God? Because we are here. What happened is the will of God. We are in the hands of God now.” A survivor’s gratitude is combined with theological fatalism. This response is entirely understandable, uttered in a ruined landscape beyond the experience of most of us, and a likely source of pastoral comfort to the bishop’s desperate flock. But that should not obscure the fact that it is little more than a piece of helpless mystification, a contradictory cry of optimistic despair.

Terrible catastrophes inevitably encourage appeals to God. We who are, at present, unfairly luckier, whether believers or not, might reflect on the almost invariably uncharitable history of theodicy, and on the reality that in this context no invocation of God beyond a desperate appeal for help makes much theological sense. For either God is punitive and interventionist (the Robertson view), or as capricious as nature and so absent as to be effectively nonexistent (the Obama view). Unfortunately, the Bible, which frequently uses God’s power over earth and seas as the sign of his majesty and intervening power, supports the first view; and the history of humanity’s lonely suffering decisively suggests the second.

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The Episcopal Diocese of Haiti is caring for close to 23,000 Haitians in at least 21 encampments around the earthquake-devastated country.

The information came Jan. 23 in a letter from Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin to Episcopal Relief & Development President Robert Radtke and posted here. In the letter, Duracin said that the diocese and the organization are working “hand-in-hand,” telling Radtke he has “complete confidence in you and your agency.”

“Please tell our partners, the people of the Episcopal Church, the people of the United States and indeed the people of the world that we in Haiti are immensely grateful for their prayers, their support and their generosity,” Duracin wrote. “This is a desperate time in Haiti; we have lost so much. But we still have the most important asset, the people of God, and we are working continuously to take care of them.”

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Though some 80 percent of Haiti’s 9 million people are professed Catholics and 16 percent are Protestants, roughly half of the total population practices Vodou, according to the CIA’s World Factbook.

Like many other indigenous religions, it has its high form and folk form, priests and rituals, according to June McDaniel, religion professor at the College of Charleston. It derives from several African cultures, including the Yoruba, and equates its gods and goddesses with Catholic saints.

For example, Legba, the messenger of the gods and a force of destiny, is thought to live at the crossroads of the spirit and material worlds. He is a doorkeeper and, thus, associated with St. Peter.

According to the beliefs, Vodou gods, or loas, live on an underwater island with the souls of the dead, McDaniel said. They are able to communicate with the living who are eager to make contact. To do so, people pray and perform various rituals.

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How did you get involved with Haiti?

I first went to Haiti 12 years ago with my friend, Anne Fairbanks, a Skidmore professor who founded the Haiti mission at our church in Troy 25 years ago. I took over the job from Anne in 2005 after I retired. Anne died last year at 85, but I’m so grateful she introduced me to Haiti. I’d never been to a Third World country when Anne dragged me along to Haiti in 1998 and it was an eye-opener for me. I fell in love with the people in Haiti at the church we sponsored, particularly the teachers, who worked so hard for so little money. Since then, I’ve made seven trips to Haiti.”

How does your church support your partner parish in Haiti?

Our members have been very generous to Haiti over the years and we send about $5,000 a year in donations. We’ve purchased school supplies, musical instruments and raised salaries for the teachers. We’ve helped improve the quality of the school in many ways, including expanding it to K-12 and a student body of 350 boys and girls. When I first visited, the fourth- and fifth-graders were barely reading. This year, every single one of the students in 12th grade passed the national exam. Every day at noon, volunteer ladies from the church make beans and rice for lunch. For many of the kids, it’s the only food they’ll get all day. They love sardines on it, which didn’t really appeal to me, but I started bringing cans of sardines on every visit. Every student gets a sardine on the top of their beans and rice and it’s a huge treat for them.

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Last week’s earthquake has devastated Haiti, and prompted a massive relief effort. In a smaller but almost equally intense way, the disaster has pervaded every part of the school day for the 510 students ”” 80 percent of them Haitian ”” at SS. Joachim and Anne, the Roman Catholic elementary school in Queens Village, Queens, a hub of New York’s Haitian community.

They pray. They scrounge up donations. The quake informs class discussions about politics, about helping the poor, about the afterlife. And when the children are not talking about it, their teachers suspect, they are thinking about it.

As classmates played with cubes on Wednesday, learning to add, Michael Constant, 6, squirmed in his seat. His mother had just left for Haiti that morning to bury his father.

As 250,000 Haitian-Americans in the New York area mourn, children bear their own burdens. Many feel as much at home in Haiti as in New York. They struggle to picture the houses where they spent summers now in rubble, grandparents and cousins dead, missing, homeless. For others, Haiti exists in tales parents tell ”” a place they long to visit and now wonder if they will ever see.

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Voodoo is playing a central role in helping Haitians cope with their unthinkable tragedy. Outside of Haitian culture, few know what Voodoo is. Elizabeth McAlister, a Voodoo expert at Wesleyan University, says at its core, the philosophy is really pretty simple.

“Voodoo in a nutshell is about the idea that everything material has a spiritual dimension that is more real” than physical reality, she says. “So everything living ”” but even rocks and the Earth ”” is considered to have spirit and have a spiritual nature.”

McAlister says there is no unified Voodoo religion. There’s no “Voodoo Pope” or central authority, no Voodoo scripture or even a core doctrine.

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When I was introduced to the congregation by the lay leader, Faubert Baptiste, he spoke one sentence in English for my benefit and then a sentence in French for the congregants.

“We have never had a bishop here,” he said. “We are glad you have come.” With Faubert’s help, I offered words of consolation and support. When I announced that I would be reading from Psalm 46, everyone immediately took out their Bibles and rose to their feet.

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea … the Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”

Following my comments, another lay member, Lucien Jendy, came forward to bring the sermon for the day. He read from Matthew 24: “As Jesus came out of the temple and was going away, his disciples came to point out to him the building of the temple. Then he asked them, ”˜You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another, all will be thrown down.’”

He explained every word of the Bible is true, and that our earthly buildings and our lives are temporary. He stressed that in life we will have suffering, but those who endure to the end will be saved.

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Did God abandon Haiti?

No, say its people of faith — and there are many here in a place without much beyond faith. The earthquake was a sign of God’s presence.

So, it should be no surprise that on a narrow street choked by debris, outside a church with a shattered ceiling open to the morning sky, what was left of the congregation of Haiti’s Second Baptist Church stood in a courtyard and waved their hands in the air and shouted, “Victoire! Victoire!”

Victory.

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Caritas search and rescue teams Jan. 19 miraculously found and pulled five people from the rubble of the badly damaged Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, where they had been clinging to life for seven days.

The first to be rescued, Enu Zizi, was pulled out by expert teams from Mexico and South Africa who worked for two hours to extract her. Caritas officials said she suffered injuries to her hips and possibly a broken leg, but “was not critically injured.”

Zizi told her rescuers, “I love you,” upon being pulled from the rubble.

Wow–read it all.

Humans are meaning-seeking creatures. We search for patterns and, if we don’t see them, we imagine them. We put all sorts of pieces together, whether by instinct, sentiment or scientific evidence.

Now, the biggest pattern of all ”” God ”” has come within our scientific purview.

Neuroscientists such as Andrew Newberg are telling us that we are “wired for God.” That belief is part of our brain structure, which is an often heard but still controversial point of view.

There’s even a term that has been invented for this type of researcher: neurotheologians.

They are St. Augustines with medical degrees and brain scanners. They take religion seriously, as a research project.

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In the face of the tragedy in Haiti, I want to make a proposal. It’s not a realistic proposal, I grant; but it is a serious one. My proposal is this: that all those Anglicans involved in litigation amongst one another in North America ”” both in the Episcopal Church and those outside of TEC; in the Anglican Church of Canada, and those outside ”” herewith cease all court battles over property. And, having done this, they do two further things:

a. devote the forecast amount they were planning to spend on such litigation to the rebuilding of the Episcopal Church and its people in Haiti; and

b. sit down with one another, prayerfully and for however long it takes, and with whatever mediating and facilitating presence they accept, and agree to a mutually agreed process for dealing with contested property.

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Rejecting offers to evacuate him from Port-au-Prince, Episcopal Diocese of Haiti Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin said Jan. 18 that he must remain in the Haitian capital.

“No, I will stay with my people,” the Rev. Lauren Stanley, one of four Episcopal Church missionaries assigned to the Haitian diocese, told ENS the bishop said in response to the evacuation offer.

Stanley was home in Virginia when the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck just before 5:00 p.m. local time Jan. 12 and has been monitoring diocesan reports from there.

“The people are strong,” Duracin told Stanley, echoing messages she has received from other priests. “We still have our people, and they are strong. We need to help them.”

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Ruth Pierre wept before the congregation of a small Haitian church in Mattapan yesterday, mourning her uncle, who was killed in the earthquake that has left her impoverished homeland in ruins.

But Pierre said she is also grateful for those who survived, for those who have been rescued from the rubble that has paralyzed Haiti.

“My uncle died, but God saved many others,’’ said Pierre, 25, one of a dozen members of Church of the Nazarene who reflected on their families and loved ones during the 11 a.m. weekly service. “Thank you, God. I pray there are more found.’’

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Like other ministers in churches with Haitian-American congregations across the USA, the Rev. David Eugene took to the pulpit of his north Miami church Sunday and sought to offer solace to his worried, grieving flock.

“I preached from Deuteronomy, chapter 31, verse 8, and the title of my sermon was ‘I will not forsake you,’ ” said Eugene, pastor of Haitian Evangelical Baptist Church. “The second part of the text was Psalms 46, verses 1 and 2 ”” ‘The Lord is my refuge, my help and my strength.’

“It was very emotional. There was some crying,” he said.

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Two Episcopal Church missionaries in Port-au-Prince say that they feared for their lives during the Jan. 12 earthquake and in its aftermath that shook the Haitian capital.

When the magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit just before 5 p.m. local time, the Rev. Canon Oge Beauvoir and his wife Serrette were in their Port-au-Prince home, he told Nathan Brockman of Trinity Wall Street in a Jan. 15 telephone call.

“For the first time I was certain I faced death,” Beauvoir told Brockman. “I was certain we were going to die.”

Beauvoir, 53, is the dean of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti’s seminary.

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With their churches flattened, their priests killed and their Bibles lost amid the rubble of their homes, desperate Haitians prayed in the streets on Sunday, raising their arms in the air and asking God to ease their grief.

Outside the city’s main cathedral, built in 1750 but now a giant pile of twisted metal, shattered stained glass and cracked concrete, parishioners held a makeshift service at the curb outside, not far from where scores of homeless people were camping out in a public park. The bishop’s sermon of hope was a hard sell, though, as many listening had lost their relatives, their homes and their possessions.

“We have to keep hoping,” said Bishop Marie Eric Toussant, although he acknowledged that he had no resources to help his many suffering parishioners and did not know whether the historic cathedral would ever be rebuilt. He said the quake had toppled the residences where priests stayed, crushing many of them.

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The world is mobilizing to respond to Haiti’s needs after its devastating earthquake. President Obama pledged a $100 million US effort in aid and recovery:

President Obama: ” To the people of Haiti we say clearly, and with conviction, you will not be forsaken. You will not be forgotten.”

Faith-based groups across the spectrum organized to raise money and send in supplies. Many religious agencies already had humanitarian teams on the ground and were trying to coordinate rescue efforts and emergency medical help. Churches and church-run hospitals, schools, and orphanages are among the buildings that are now rubble. Many US religious groups are still trying to locate staff, missionaries, and short-term workers. Among the confirmed dead, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Joseph Mioht.

Here in the US, there have been many special prayer services and vigils for the victims. Pastors and spiritual counselors tried to offer comfort to grieving Haitian Americans. Several religious groups are working to bring injured and displaced Haitians here. The vast majority of Haiti’s population is Christian.

Because of the many Haitians in the US and Haiti’s proximity to the US, and because of the overwhelming needs, all over this country there are people with personal connections to the tragedy. Kim Lawton, our managing editor, has grandparents who were missionaries in Haiti and parents who did short-term mission work there.

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ZENIT: What is the immediate need?

Cardinal Cordes: Every natural catastrophe is unique, but our long experience of previous disasters (e.g. Tsunami, Katrina) shows two distinct phases:

— Short-term: manpower is needed to save lives, provide the basic necessities (water, food, shelter, prevention of disease), restore order;

— Long-term: reconstruction, offering spiritual and psychological help, especially when media attention fades away.

Benedict XVI has called on all people of good will to be generous and concrete in their response in order to meet the immediate needs of our suffering brothers and sisters in Haiti (General Audience, Jan. 13, 2010). It is important that we are giving tangible help through the charitable agencies of the Catholic Church. Much is being organized and encouraged in this regard throughout the world.

For example, the episcopal conference of Italy has set Jan. 24 as a day of prayer and charity for the people of Haiti. The national embassies to the Holy See are organizing the sacrifice of the Holy Mass to be offered for our suffering brothers and sisters. We must remember to intercede through prayer and not only money for the suffering of Haiti.

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Can this be a turning point? Haiti is crying out for better government at home. But it also certainly requires improved support from those on whom it relies. The United Nations has failed miserably on most fronts over the past decade, and the leadership of Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has so far suggested little improvement. In rebuilding Haiti on a better foundations, the UN has an opportunity to demonstrate what it usefully can do.

Haiti also represents a decisive challenge to the Obama Administration, and one that extends far beyond the immediate rescue effort. Meanwhile, the response of China ”” a paltry contribution of $1 million ”” has proved depressingly revealing. After the Sichuan earthquake, the international community rushed to help China. But China has shown no such reciprocity now. The asymmetries of China’s self-serving foreign policy are looking increasingly consistent.

Haiti has frequently been described as the world’s unluckiest country. That plight looks set to continue in the short term. But the underlying causes of that fate have been international as well as domestic.

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[url=http://is.gd/6oLz4]A photo of the Cathedral before the earthquake is here[/url] (Hat tip: Brien).

Check out what remains from Mark Harris. Makes the heart sad–KSH.

A local family is still waiting for word on a Washougal man who has been missing since Tuesday’s earthquake devastated Haiti.

Walt Ratterman was visiting Haiti to check on a solar-power project when his family lost touch with him when the quake hit.

“We are pretty certain he was sending e-mails at the time, from the courtyard of Hotel Montana,” said Briana Ratterman, daughter of the missing man.

This is but one illustration of dramas playing out throughout the world this week. Read it all and please check out this blog entry also. If you have time check out the linked Facebook page–it makes for moving reading.

Interviewed on the programme, Commander Ron Flanders of the US 4th Fleet, based in Florida, said that the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was acting as a sea-base from which the navy could deliver supplies to the island. “Our main goal,” he said, “is to ease suffering and prevent loss of life”.

Listen to it all (about 10 1/2 minutes).

On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.

The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.

In the recent anthology “What Works in Development?,” a group of economists try to sort out what we’ve learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.

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And as the international community continues to respond, I do believe that America has a continued responsibility to act. Our nation has a unique capacity to reach out quickly and broadly and to deliver assistance that can save lives.

That responsibility obviously is magnified when the devastation that’s been suffered is so near to us. Haitians are our neighbors in the Americas, and for Americans they are family and friends. It’s characteristic of the American people to help others in time of such severe need. That’s the spirit that we will need to sustain this effort as it goes forward. There are going to be many difficult days ahead.

So, so many people are in need of assistance. The port continues to be closed, and the roads are damaged. Food is scarce and so is water. It will take time to establish distribution points so that we can ensure that resources are delivered safely and effectively and in an orderly fashion.

But I want the people of Haiti to know that we will do what it takes to save lives and to help them get back on their feet. In this effort I want to thank our people on the ground — our men and women in uniform, who have moved so swiftly; our civilians and embassy staff, many of whom suffered their own losses in this tragedy; and those members of search and rescue teams from Florida and California and Virginia who have left their homes and their families behind to help others. To all of them I want you to know that you demonstrate the courage and decency of the American people, and we are extraordinarily proud of you.

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Efforts to deliver desperately needed food, water and medical help to victims of Haiti’s earthquake intensified on Friday even as the voices of survivors buried underneath mountains of rubble began to fall silent.

Cargo planes and military helicopters swooped in and out of the crowded airport in Port-au-Prince. Hundreds of American troops were arriving, with more on the way. Some 25 rescue teams fanned out to collapsed hotels, schools and homes, and aid groups said they had given food and blankets to thousands of people.

But 2 million to 3 million are still in dire need, and patience was wearing thin on the streets as Haiti went another day with no power and limited fresh water.

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Up to 10,000 US troops will be on the ground or off the coast of Haiti by Monday to help deal with the earthquake aid effort, US defence officials say.

Aid distribution has begun, but logistics continue to be extremely difficult, UN officials say.

Tuesday’s earthquake has left as many as 50,000-100,000 people dead.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said more than 15,000 bodies had already been recovered and buried, French news agency AFP reported.

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