Summary of 3 Sources

I will be writing on the relationship between secular and religious disaster conceptions, with a focus on natural disasters, and how secular and religious groups justify the catastrophic occurrence.

The 2010 study, “Religions, natural hazards, and disasters: An introduction,” by J.C. Galliard and P. Texier elaborates on how the media is “keen” on covering natural disasters as acts of god, since the idea of punishment by way of natural disaster is so common in many western religions. Galliard and Texier posit that the ubiquity of disasters intended to punish and teach humans in western religions may be why certain societies are willing to accept such rationalizations. Ultimately, they argue that religion acts as an effective contributor to disaster-risk reduction, as they are generally trusted groups within the greater community that are able to arrive at the aftermath of disaster much faster than other groups can.

In the 1999 study, “Value-conflict arising from a disaster,” A.J.W. Taylor argues that religion can sometimes stand in the way of effective disaster treatment. Taylor uses the aftermath of a cyclone in the Cook Islands to illustrate how clergy were more focused on victims accounting for their sins, and less so on providing the actual aid the victims required. A secular trauma therapist criticized the clergy, accusing them of focusing too much on “…the Book of Revelation rather than on the Gospels of the New Testament. Taylor effectively argues that aid-groups need to pay attention to the value systems of disaster victims in order to more accurately address their needs.

In her 2010 study, “Anthropology of religion: Disaster and the representations of tradition and modernity,” J. Schlehe speculates that religion provides a way for people to express specific political interests after a disaster: by claiming the reason for the disaster is divine, certain groups of people can achieve various economic, social, or political gains that would have been hard to attain without the influence of religion. Schlehe claims that this methodology can be used to manipulate groups of people into acting in ways different from how they would have acted if the disaster had not been justified as a punishment from god.