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It's not Clarke's purpose to consider how Christians—and evangelicals in particular—might distinctively wrestle with catastrophe. Theologically, such matters are tied up with rival understandings of God's sovereignty, though how they play out in the everyday lives of believers is another question.

What about the charge—raised, for example, by Bill Moyers ("Welcome to Doomsday") in a screed in The New York Review of Books last year—that evangelicals tend to be indifferent to global warming and other threats to the environment because (with some exceptions) they're pretty much convinced the Rapture is coming soon anyway? Presumably the same reasoning would apply to other potential catastrophes, unless they are looming straight ahead.

Moyers needs to get out more. He would find evangelicals planting trees, engaging in estate planning, and generally behaving as if this present world will continue, even while knowing that it will someday come to an end. But there is a grain of truth in his indictment. Modern evangelicalism suffers from an enfeebled doctrine of Creation. There are, however, hopeful signs of generational change.

As for those catastrophes just waiting to happen ("Things that have never happened before happen all the time," Scott Sagan nicely puts it, quoted by Clarke), perhaps it would be wisest to divide the labor of our worrying. Unprompted, I wake up in the middle of the night with just the sort of thoughts Clarke's book encourages: for instance, the worldwide failure of the coffee crop due to some pestilential mutation. So you needn't worry about that particular catastrophe. I've got it covered.

John Wilson is the editor of Books & Culture and of Best Christian Writing 2006 (Jossey-Bass).

Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Worst Cases is available from Amazon.com and other book retailers.

More about the book, including an interview with the author, is available from the University of Chicago Press.

For specific instructions on how to survive such disasters as a failed parachute, a shark or alligator attack, or an alien abduction, see the worst cases scenario website.

If you're wondering about if you should worry about bird flu, read how the U.S. is overdue and underprepared for it.

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January 2006, Vol. 50, No. 1