RAGING WILDFIRE IN CALIFORNIA: IS GOD ANGRY AT AMERICANS?

“No surprise in this Godless town” Nikki Glaser said.

 During the 2025 Golden Globe Awards, which held on the evening of January 5, 2025, the host of the day, Nikki Glaser, who is also a celebrity stand-up comedian, may have mocked God and God may have r His wrath!

Top of the news in the US is the tragic wildfire incident that ravaged and continues to ravage Los Angeles County in Southern California. The catastrophic wildfire was reported to have started since January 7, 2025 in LA and its surrounding regions. The fire, whose cause is still under investigation, was said to have been exacerbated due to the dry weather conditions, low humidity and severe windstorm of the Santa Ana winds. 

However, some netizens have opined and speculated that the raving fire is God’s anger towards Hollywood, especially because of the ‘expensive joke’ which Nikki Glaser made during the awards event and the many Hollywood celebrities that all laughed at the joke.

Backstory

The Golden Globe Awards

The annual golden globe awards which held on January 5, 2025, was reportedly hosted by celebrity stand-up comedian, Nikki Glaser, the first woman to solo host the Golden Globe Awards. The 82nd annual event, sometimes referred to as ‘Hollywood’s party of the year’ is an event that celebrates the best of both film and television. The awards show was held at The Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, with many people in attendance, both physically and online. Nikki Glaser, known for her keen and devastating celebrity roasts did not hold back her jokes during the event, no one was off limit in her jokes, including the pope. During one of her host duties, just before introducing two award presenters, she goes: “There were so many great movies this year, from ‘Wicked’ to ‘Conclave.’ Wait, that just gave me an idea” Glaser turns around and the stage light goes off, when the lights comes back on, she was wearing a MITRE (bishop’s hat) which a pope also wears, and was holding a pink staff, to imitate a Ferula, otherwise known as Pastoral Staff- literally a pope’s staff. After the appearance, she goes ahead to sing ‘popular’, a song from the musical movie, ‘Wicked’ (the movie which won the award for cinematic box office achievement), but in a catholic version. She goes: “You will be pope-ular. You’re gonna be pope-ular. I’ll teach you some catholic prayer…’' after which she jokes about being told through an earpiece that she was embarrassing.

Moving on, during another standout moment, Glaser made a joke about the number of people that were thanked by those who received awards, by tallying them up in a list on-screen. According to her count, cast and crews had received 11 shout-outs, 3 awardees had thanked their mom, Mario Lopez, host of Access Hollywood, received one shout-out, while God, received no mentions/shout-outs. She goes ahead to say “no surprise in this godless town”

This commentary has received many backlashes from netizens who analyzed what she said and her imitation of catholic sacred objects as being blasphemous, and many comments like “God cannot be mocked!” were in order on her social media page. Attributing the seeming apocalyptic wildfire that ravaged Los Angeles for at least six days to the ‘No-God’ joke, especially since the fire started 48hours after Nikki Glaser’s comment, netizens claimed that the wildfire was God’s response to the blasphemy.

Wildfires in LA, Southern California

Wildfires are not new in the United States, there have in fact been past cases. Wildfires can be triggered through many reasons including, natural causes like lightening, droughts, human activity like unextinguished smoking materials, faulty electrical equipment, overheating automobiles, arson, and so on. For years now, the US have experienced climate changes which increased heat with little to no rain, as well as series of lightnings that had ignited wildfires. 

Some of the most naturally caused wildfires in the history of California includes: The August Complex Fire, which occurred in August 2020 as a result of strong heat waves, destroying at least 935 structures and lasting 87days in total across Glenn, Lake, Mendocino, Tehama, Trinity and Shasta counties. The 2018 Camp fire, which occurred in the town of Paradise, was ignited through a faulty pacific gas and electric power line that failed during strong winds, reportedly destroying 95% of the town. The 2021 Dixie Fire, happened across the counties of Butte, Lassen, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama, after a tree fell and hit an energized power line owned by pacific gas and electric (California’s largest power company), it lasted for 104 days and destroyed about three times the land area in the city of Los Angeles. The Mendocino Complex Fire of 2018 burned thousands of acres in the counties of Mendocino, Lake, Colusa and Glenn counties, lasting 161 days before it was completely contained. These further prove that wildfire news is no new news in the US.

Since late summer 2024, Southern California has experienced very dry weather conditions, making the incident seem unavoidable. The fire danger, was however well forecast by professionals and eviction notifications, sent to residents ahead. The National Interagency Fire Center, on January 2, gave the first potential fire signal, using the weather conditions in Southern California, which according to them ‘'were above normal significant fire potential’'. Following the warning, the forecasts of the local National Weather Service (NWS), also noted the potential for intense fires. 

With the forecasts and warnings of extreme fire danger, notices were sent to locales to evacuate their buildings to avoid the dangerous situation. Moreover, the wildfires started on January 7 and as of January 10, the fires had penetrated several counties, especially Palisades and Eaton, which recorded the greatest fire penetrations and destructions. 

The Palisades fire, which started on January 7, along the Los Angeles County coast is the first and largest of the wildfires. Driven by extremely powerful winds, the fire reportedly killed at least 5 people with more than 3 people injured, and destroyed about 5,300 structures, making it the third most destructive fire in the history of California.

Making the fourth most destructive fire in California, the Eaton fire followed the Palisades fire, it began in the evening of January 7 in the mountains of San Gabriel, in Eaton Cayon. The wildfire reportedly burned more than 14,117acres, leaving 8 people dead by January 11. Following these great fires more fires ignited in other counties, making the Hurst fire, Kenneth fire, Auto fire, Lidia fire, Archer fire, Woodley fire, Olivas fire, Sunset fire.

So far, at least 12 people have died from the wildfires and early estimates suggest the total damage and economic loss to be between $60 billion to $130 billion 

GOD VERSUS the United States: opinion

If there are proofs and past records of destructive wildfires being almost annual events in the US and mostly of natural causes, can we still claim that the 2025 wildfires are definitely God’s wrath? 

As a religious person myself, empathy is very important to me. Scrolling through posts and comments on the social media, there were many people who termed the 2025 US fires as a repetition of the fates that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah suffered in the bible because of their sins. Hence, implying that the US’ embrace of LGBTQ+ rights as well as the Nikki Glaser-situation have all come together to invoke the wrath of God, leading to the wildfires sweeping across Southern California in the US. Some even showed satisfaction at the leveled cities and the lives and properties that got burnt. If people who claim to believe in God express themselves like this,where then is the place of humanity in religion?

As written above, the 2025 Golden Globes Awards was held on January 5, Southern California had started having humid weather conditions since 2924, and by January 2 2025, forecasts were made about the weather conditions and possible fires ahead. This means that forecasts had already been made days before the Golden Globes, does that click something?

If truly it was the case that the sins in the US had angered God and invoked His punishment, then we should also expect wildfires and God’s punishments in other countries all over the world. Also, if the destructive natural disaster was God’s response to the sins of Americans, what about conservative countries who also suffer effects from natural disasters?

At the end of it all, it is important to not deny that at one point or the other, countries all over the world had experienced natural disasters and it could happen anywhere, therefore while we exhibit our religious practices and beliefs, it is also important to show what we preach- love and compassion.

This way, we would not be complacent and immersed in religious rhetorics and hypocrisy that further didvides us, but rather be more concerned about real issues- natural disasters and why they occur.