Amen to that, Mr. Falwell

Jerry Falwell's Sept. 14 description on Pat Robertson's "The 700 Club" of the World Trade Center attack as God's payback against feminists, gays, pro-choice advocates and the ACLU drew such national outrage that both men were compelled to make half-hearted retractions. But that doesn't mean the pair don't have their own audience of ditto heads.

The next day, Sadie Fields, state chairwoman of the Christian Coalition of Georgia, e-mailed a statement to friends and supporters that strongly echoed Falwell's sentiments. The United States has "allowed organizations like the ACLU to virtually wipe God's name off the face of this nation," she writes, according to a copy of her essay intercepted by the Anti-Defamation League. Thus, she continues, "we have gone blithely along believing that we could do whatever we wanted without consequence. No more. God's justice is here. Wake up, America."

Contacted this week at her Dunwoody offices, Fields tones down her rhetoric, but sticks to her philosophical guns by pointing to abortion and secularism as twin evils that threaten America's standing in God's esteem.

"We've turned our backs on so many of God's instructions," she explains. "We need to repent for veering away from the Biblical world view that our nation was founded upon."

While she isn't willing to go on record to label the Sept. 11 attack an act of divine retribution, Fields sees a definite causal connection between that horrific event and the moral degeneracy epitomized by such groups as People for the American way.

"God is not the author of evil, but he is sovereign and he allows things to happen for a reason," she explains, citing the example of when she was seriously injured 10 years ago after a large tree limb fell on her head.

That's certainly as good an explanation for these kinds of theories as you're likely to get.??