Thanks America

The US and Australia have a very close relationship when bushfires strike. Every northern summer when California burns, we send firefighters and equipment over there and they do the same when we are hit hard. It's a good thing and must be supported.

But one influence we can do without is the fundamentalist brand of evangelical Protestant Christianity developed in the US and now exported here.

One of the most extreme examples in the US of this tendency is Pastor Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church. Phelps has a quite unhealthy obsession with what gay types get up in their day-to-day lives and has become convinced that because the US 'tolerates and encourages' the 'sin' of homosexuality, all bad things that happen there are divine retribution.

He even pickets the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan with charming signs like those above.

Now the Australian wing of this movement - mega churches, babbling in tongues, DONATE NOW! - is getting in on the act.

One of the biggest churches, the badly-named Catch The Fire Ministry, issued a statement claming that access to abortion in Victoria is the reason for the fires.

“In my dream I saw fire everywhere with flames burning very high and uncontrollably. With this I woke up from my dream with the interpretation as the following words came to me in a flash from the Spirit of God.

That His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb.”

“We at CTFM have spent the last few days in prayer and weeping, watching the news and learning that more than 170 people have perished and more than 750 houses have gone up in flames with much property and personal belongings of people all wiped out within hours,” he said.