A low moment early in the agonized public reaction to the Gulf oil disaster was when Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested the deadly explosion and poisonous spill were acts of God.

He was referring to the contractual, legal definition — act of God as an extraordinary, unforeseen natural event beyond our control. But it trivialized the divine name to drag it into a human-made mess. As if to say: sooner blame God than an oil company.

The shame of the tragedy soon pushed us past cheap rhetoric to fresh self-evaluation. Southern Baptist educator Russell Moore recently identified the dubious bargain struck between American Christians and American business.

“For too long, we evangelical Christians have maintained an uneasy ecological conscience. I include myself in this indictment,” Moore, dean of the school of theology at Louisville’s Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote in a June blog.

“We’ve had an inadequate view of human sin. Because we believe in free markets, we’ve acted as though this means we should trust corporations to protect the natural resources and habitats. But a laissez-faire view of government regulation of corporations is akin to the youth minister who lets the teenage girl and boy sleep in the same sleeping bag at church camp because he ‘believes in young people.’ ”

This remains a minority view. Now that BP is capping the poison spill, pressure will be great to return to normal consumption assumptions. For churches, this means resuming the role of weekly oasis of stability and tradition, not leading protests against empty materialism and corporate virtue.