EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : Is Quake a Sign of God’s Wrath? Clergy Say No : Religion: Most absolve the Almighty of blame for natural disasters, but have a harder time explaining why some people die and others live.

From a small Korean Presbyterian congregation in Sylmar to a Jewish synagogue in mid-town Los Angeles and Catholic Masses in Santa Monica, the question among earthquake-shaken worshipers was the same: If there is a God, why does God condone human misery and suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people?

“The freezing, the floods, the fires. God’s telling us something,” Terry Lopez, 40, declared from under a tarp outside Santa Rosa Catholic Church in San Fernando, one of three damaged churches where Cardinal Roger M. Mahony celebrated Mass on Sunday.

Lopez is not alone in his thoughts. The cataclysms visited upon Southern California in the last several years--wildfires, riots, mudslides, drought and now earthquakes--can seem almost biblical in their dimensions.

In the week since the 6.6 temblor that killed 55 people and caused untold suffering, callers on radio talk shows and hosts on late-night national television, among others, have offered ideas on what God had in mind, some more serious than others.

Comedian Jay Leno, on NBC’s “Tonight Show” on Wednesday night, mimicked God holding Los Angeles in the palm of his hand, shaking it violently and demanding: “They’re still making those porno films in L.A.?” God, Leno quipped, must be angry.

Is Los Angeles--long celebrated and denounced for its sometimes wicked lifestyles--reeling from the wrath of God?

Clergy--Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim--were nearly unanimous in not blaming God for the earthquake. Many, but not all, were hesitant to call it judgment from on high.

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said during a fund-raising telethon for his “700 Club” that “it isn’t coincidental” that there have been Midwest floods, Florida hurricanes and California earthquakes.

Spokesman Gene Kapp said later that Robertson believes God may be lifting His “hand of protection” over the United States “. . . to get our attention, for us as a nation to repent and pay attention to his word.”

But Mahony, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, demurred. “I don’t think God deals with us like that,” he said.

In houses of worship throughout Los Angeles this weekend, the message was much the same.

At Wilshire Boulevard Temple on Saturday, Rabbi Harvey J. Fields repudiated unnamed Christian fundamentalist preachers that he said were from the “Los Angeles had it coming” school.

“They claim Los Angeles is a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah,” Fields boomed from the pulpit of the Reform synagogue, where 180 congregants came for Shabbat services. “And God’s finger of judgment has brought all this destruction upon us . . . to shock us into repentance. . . . Such a notion makes of God a monster, a force not for good but evil, a power that picks out tiny babies and old innocent women and deliberately bashes in their skulls.”

At the 8,000-member Church on the Way in Van Nuys, one of the largest congregations affiliated with the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel denomination, Pastor Jack W. Hayford gently admonished well-meaning Christians who saw the quake as God’s judgment.

Referring to callers on a radio talk show, Hayford said to several thousand members Sunday: “Almost nobody says anything that has anything of light to it, including believers who defend God.

“God isn’t responsible for pain. He didn’t collapse an apartment house and kill 16 people. He didn’t collapse a freeway so that a motorcycle officer could drive off,” Hayford said, referring to fatalities in last Monday’s earthquake.

Hayford blamed the quake on the “fallen state” of the world. He said that before sin entered the world, everything about God’s creation--both humans and the physical planet--was perfect. He held that it was only when God gave man responsibility for the planet and he fell into sin that both humans and the planet itself became broken.

Suffering and pain result from the fall, not from God’s will, Hayford said.

At All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, the Rev. George Regas said before services Sunday: “It is really important for people not to lay upon God what happens in such tragic ways to us. . . . I feel deep within me that in a tragic moment the first heart to break is God’s heart.”

But if God did not cause the earthquake, can God use it for good? Clergy and various church members interviewed Sunday said that God can.

“It’s God trying to get us to reflect on what we’ve done, how we act. We are all sinners. It’s a signal he’s sending us,” Luz Efelia Diaz, 37, said standing outside Mary Immaculate Church in Pacoima, where 3,700 followers packed the first two Masses of the day--double the usual attendance. Heavily damaged in the quake, the church entrance was cordoned off and a statue of the Virgin Mary lay toppled.

In Sylmar, about 200 college-age Korean Americans crowded into the 22 pews of Valley Korean Community Church, where the sanctuary ceiling was cracked from the quake. John Koh, the 27-year-old pastor, made no attempt to explain why the quake struck but prevailed on his young congregants to look for the good that may come out of the disaster, such as drawing closer to one’s neighbors.

Eugene Cho, 21, a student at Occidental College attending the church in Sylmar, said: “I was just humbled by the experience. It just puts into perspective who God is, how powerful he is and how little I am. It just reminds me that Jesus is going to return soon.”

Maher Hathout, chairman of the Islamic Center of Southern California, said Muslims look at natural disasters not as God’s punishment, but as a test. “The feeling of Muslims is that with every difficulty there is a test. And with every difficulty there is some kind of mercy in disguise. It may bring out the best in people, the best in the community, and remind people of their limitations and the unlimited power of God that is embedded in nature,” Hathout said.

At quake-damaged St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church on Old Orchard Road in Valencia, the Rev. Lynn Jay said asking why God caused the earthquake was the wrong question.

“I think a better theological question to ask is, ‘What now am I required to do because of this?’ ” she said.

More than fine theological points, getting help and assistance to others in need was the message stressed in pulpits across the city, from quake-battered St. Monica’s Catholic Church in Santa Monica, where tearful parishioners observed Mass before a makeshift altar in the church school gymnasium, to St. James Presbyterian Church in Tarzana, another sanctuary that sustained severe damage.

Many also said disasters can be a time to reconsider what is important in life. “For the first time in 100 years,” said the Rev. Jess Moody, senior pastor at Shepherd of the Hills Church, a 6,000-member Southern Baptist affiliate in Porter Ranch, “Los Angeles has had a great divorce (from) materialism.”

Eric A. Thomas, pastor of Christ Community Church in Canoga Park, no more than two miles from the epicenter, said before Sunday services, “I think the people that have suffered loss have all walked out of their apartments (and homes), over the glass and litter, and said, ‘Thank God I’m safe,’ ” he said before the sermon. “Someone inevitably says, ‘What did you lose?’ and they inevitably say, ‘It’s not important.’ ”

But if clergy were relatively certain that God was not to blame for the quake, they were more hard pressed to explain why some die while others are spared.

“We do not know why these tragedies happen,” evangelist Billy Graham said in a statement issued immediately after the Los Angeles earthquake. “But we know that he can use what has happened as a result of this disaster to bring people closer to him and closer to one another,” Graham said.

The theme of togetherness also resonated with the Rev. Cecil A. Murray of First African Methodist Episcopal Church, a leading congregation in the African American community, where 2,000 packed the sanctuary for Sunday services.

“As devastating as Mother Nature is, it’s not half as devastating as human nature,” Murray intoned. “Mother Nature is an equal-opportunity employer--Mother Nature visited Beverly Hills, Mother Nature visited Imperial Gardens. Mother Nature has no respect over humans. Human nature plays favorites. That’s why divine nature seems to bring a message to us out of this act of Mother Nature.

“Divine nature,” Murray concluded, “says that you are all shook up--the person from Beverly Hills and the person from Imperial Gardens. The red, yellow, black, white, the Christian, the Muslim, the Jew--you are all put on this thing together, and you’re all shook up together.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers John Dart, Paul Feldman, Faye Fiore, Ralph Frammolino, Don Lee, Sonia Nazario and Irene Wielawski, and special correspondents Andrea Heiman and Kathy Kelleher.