The Fear of an Angry God

From the ancient Greeks up to the present, and almost everywhere on the planet, humanity has been plagued by a constant, deep, mostly unspoken form of anxiety. This is the fear that an entire community may get hurt by a crisis or a disaster because the heavens are angered by the behavior of just a few of its members.

 

The Fear of an Angry God describes the many ways that mostly private ‘sins’ have been believed to risk the occurrence of earthquakes, floods, fires, wars, and infectious diseases. Recently, conservative leaders of different faiths have attributed the Covid-19 pandemic to a range of private behaviors that would have provoked God’s ire

 

In the book, Dutch historian Coen Ackers shows how this fear of collective divine punishment has shaped the way society has been regulated, how it allowed rulers to assume intrusive powers over their subjects, and how it continues to hurt minorities, justify terrorism, and promote autocratic government.