A PRESBYTERIAN church minister caused anger yesterday after he compared the Asian tsunami to Noah’s flood and claimed it was an act of God to punish “pleasure seekers” who broke the Sabbath.

The Rev John MacLeod, 74, a senior minister in the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, said that the disaster, which claimed 226,000 lives in 13 countries on Boxing Day, was a “divine visitation that ought to make men tremble the world over”.

He said that God was “no idle spectator of what is happening here and He treats men with sharpness and severity in order that they may know their vices. Some of the places most affected by this tsunami attracted pleasure seekers from all over the world.

“It has to be noted that the wave arrived on the Lord’s Day, the day that God has set apart to be observed the world over by a holy resting from all employments and recreations.”

Yesterday other churches and charities pointed out that most of those who died were the poor, ordinary people of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India.

But Mr MacLeod, minister for two parishes in London and Kent, was standing by his comments, which appeared in this month’s edition of the church magazine. In the article, he said that those who explained the disaster “simply as a natural phenomenon resulting from a movement in the earth’s crust underneath the ocean floor” were forgetting that God “is in sovereign control of all events”.

He said that God had sent a flood in the days of Noah to punish sinners and had “rained fire and brimstone from heaven upon Sodom” for the same reason.

“Do not worldliness, materialism, hedonism, uncleanness and pleasure-seeking characterise our own generation to a great extent and does not this solemn visitation in providence remind us that He remains the same God still?” he said.

It is not the first time that Mr MacLeod has blamed disasters on God’s wrath. In 2001 he wrote to the Queen and Henry McLeish, then Scotland’s First Minster, and advised them that their meetings with the “blasphemous” Pope had unleashed Old Testament-style retribution on Britain in the form of floods, train crashes and the foot-and-mouth “plague”.

The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland has about 3,000 members, mainly in the Hebrides, takes the Bible literally and adheres strictly to the Sabbath. Dancing, even at weddings, is considered sinful, as are women who cut their hair, wear trousers or go hatless in church. Hymn and carol singing are frowned upon; psalms are chanted during worship.

The Wee Wee Frees, as they are also known, were behind protests to stop Sunday ferries and flights to the Hebrides and it is claimed that the playground gates in Stornoway were once padlocked on the Sabbath.

Richard Bunting, of the Disasters Emergency Committee, which has received more than £250 million from Britons towards tsunami relief work, said: “Fortunately the overwhelming response of the British public has been one of unprecedented generosity and deep concern for the poorest who have born the brunt of this disaster.”

The Roman Catholic Church in Scotland said: “Our belief is in a God of love, who suffers with us, not an avenging deity.”

The Church of Scotland said: “In an event such as the tsunami most Christians would prefer to talk of God as suffering with the victims, rather than as the cause of their misery.”

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