faith-based disaster

A few days ago, I made an off-hand remark that Katrina was the country's first example of a "faith-based" disaster: The official response by local, state and national agencies was to just pray that everything would get better. Help was ridiculously slow to arrive, so the suffering had to pray that everything would turn out OK.

Alternatively, they could simply pray for their souls, like the hundreds of people who died of starvation, flooding or who died of medical problems. So the faith-based disaster relief was less expensive and certainly more faith-positive.

Turns out that I was right.

I had no idea of these facts.

On the official FEMA website, there were only two secular organizations listed for contributions. The rest were faith-based. Additionally, FEMA ignored some experienced secular organizations with prior disaster relief experience. They went, instead, with Baptist and Catholic Bible Camps. (I guess poor people need a little dose of the old time religion with their FEMA checkcards, right? Or maybe the checkcards are faith-based, too?)