Grounding Zeus: Lightning vs The Church

Skip the B.S.

by Skip Eisiminger

“Lightning rods interfere with God’s vengeance.”—Anonymous 18^th-Century Churchman

“Good heavens! The postilion has been struck by lightning.”—French phrase book for English language students, c.1880

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—2/13/12—Standing on treeless knolls surveying the sky, Greek priests would not have been surprised to learn that the planet Jupiter has ten times more lightning that’s ten times stronger than Earth’s. No word on what the priests of Aphrodite thought when lightning was discovered on Venus. For all their power and prestige, the priests of Zeus were surely embarrassed by frequent fires in the temple attic. When the Turks weren’t dynamiting the Parthenon, Zeus was hurling thunderbolts at his estranged daughter’s home as well as his own at Olympia. As the thunder rolled, priests of all stripes could only scratch their heads as they ran for shelter.

Given these divine family quarrels, it should come as no astonishment that any number of churchmen and righteous laymen have regarded lightning as a sign of the gods’ displeasure.

Crossing the Great Plains in 1848, the painter George D. Brewertonfound (himself, bearing “the brunt of a battle between conflicting armies of opposing storm clouds . . . .”) concludes his journal entry saying, “Never have I experienced so fully the sense of a personal malevolence . . . in the gathering and onset of [this] tempest . . . .”

Why Brewerton thought God or Satan had suddenly taken a personal interest in eliminating him shows a lack of faith in Nature’s indifference, but he certainly isn’t alone in this respect.

In 1755, Dr. Thomas Prince did not find mischief in God’s work, but in man’s.

This pastor at Boston’s Old South Church claimed that a rare but severe earthquake centered off Cape Ann had been caused by excess electricity conducted into the earth by way of the “Franklin rods” that home, business, and church owners had just begun to install. He did not say where he thought lightning went before the rods were introduced.

Like Dr. Prince, Rev. Mather Byles, also of Boston, was alarmed by “how thin the Arch [is] which interposes between us and a Furnace of Flame.” Because humans have no business shaking that delicate arch, Congregational churches were among the last New England institutions to install protective rods, because they appeared to question God’s mercy, especially when they were mounted higher than the cross on the steeple.

Despite Ben Franklin’s pioneering work in demythologizing lightning, The Enlightenment was slower coming to America than France.

Just think of the metric system.

Moreover, in 1786, a French study had found that over a 33-year period, 103 sextons had been electrocuted while pulling wet ropes in thunder storms. A similar study in Germany produced almost identical numbers. The practice of ringing church bells to defuse lightning had originated in the 13th Century, with St. Thomas Aquinas, who concluded that since lightning was the work of the devil, a church’s consecrated bell would dissipate its force. Given the difficulty of refuting a saint, untold thousands died before that practice was banned.

In 1745, Peter Ahlwardts, a British scientist, reported his considered opinion with regard to thunder storms. Steepled churches, he said, are the last places one should seek refuge in a storm. He based this recommendation on the fact that only churches and no barns had been struck by lightning in the Good Friday storm of 1718.

Despite these studies to the north, the Venetian Doge decided that the safest place to store 200,000 pounds of gunpowder was the crypt of San Nazaro in Brescia. Seventeen years after lightning rods had been made available, lightning struck the ungrounded church, sparking an explosion that killed 3,000 people and leveled one-sixth of the city. Not long after, most bell towers in the Catholic world were quietly grounded.

Discussing Alexander Pope’s contention that “Whatever is, is good,” I once told a sophomore literature class that his sweeping statement “covered everything from lightning to the Holocaust.”

I was expecting to field a question on the “virtues” of genocide, when a student asked, “Well, what is good about lightning?” He then added, “An uncle of mine was urinating on a wire fence years ago when lightning struck. After he regained consciousness, he was impotent until his death.”

I refrained from commenting on fools who urinate on metal objects under dark skies and said lightning had shown early humans how to cook their food and warm their caves. Then I promised I’d check with a friend in Agricultural Economics who had done some research on protecting metal farm buildings from lightning.

A few days later, I came to class and said that Pope apparently knew what he was writing about. We still have a lot to learn about the way lightning functions in our ecosystem, but its “rightness” or “good fit” in the grand scheme of things is undeniable. (Of course, if your home has just burned down, you may have a hard time appreciating “nature’s gifts.”)

1. Ozone. Lightning strikes somewhere on the globe a hundred times every second, and with each strike, some ozone is produced that floats into the stratosphere to protect the life below from the sun’s burning rays.
2. Clearing of atmospheric static. Lightning functions to ground free electrons, making static-free, wireless communications possible.
3. Forest fires. Though about a hundred lives are lost in the US annually and millions of dollars in property damage are incurred, these lightning-induced fires clear the debris on the forest floor, allowing new plants to sprout, on which wildlife feed.
4. Nitrogen. Every year, lightning “fixes” about twelve pounds of this natural fertilizer in every arable acre on earth.
5. Life itself. Run an electric current through hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water, and the result is 22 amino acids among other things essential to life.

Good heavens, Gentle Readers! Who said heaven isn’t good?

As I told the class, objective moral calculations are difficult if you are directly affected, but informed reason is our best “lightning rod”—it warns us, among other things, not to pee on metal fences.

Indeed, as the Scandinavian proverb states: “There’s no bad weather; only the wrong clothes.” In other words, if lightning is striking, clothe yourself in a house or car.

Reason, however, often finds itself among old foes in the Deep South, but judge for yourself.

The Christian Fellowship Church in Blenheim, South Carolina (population 137) was struck by lightning three times in two years. In 2003, fire caused heavy damage, after which one church member said, “I’m not worried; God is good.

The Empire State Building is hit 20 times a year, and it’s still standing.” Indeed, the 1,250ft-tall landmark is struck an average of 23 times annually, which means that, in 2012, it’s been hit about 1,900 times since its completion in 1931. Yet for all the millions of amperes the building has conducted into the earth, it’s never suffered the kind of lightning-induced damage the Blenheim Church has.

If I were the pastor, I’d do what the Empire State’s builders did: invest in some insulators and copper wire.