“Every generation needs a new revolution.”
-Thomas Jefferson

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-Martin Luther King Jr.


Staceyann Chin, National Equality March 10/10/09 photo: Ed Needham

Monday, February 22, 2010

What's the deal with these Pastors leading prayer calling for the death of Pres. Obama?

Not a joke people. There are actually Pastors leading their congregations in prayer calling for God to take Obama from the living. It is generally no longer surprising to us when many of today's Christianists speak of their personalized God. You know, the God that seems to share many of the same human-like hang-ups of the congregations themselves. Their God is vengeful, intolerant, easily Republican, very much an American, and extremely homophobic.

Well, those same Christianists have outdone themselves and actually surprised us with what they are willing to attempt to cloak with religion - calling for the death of the President. John Avalon, author of Wingnuts: How The Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America, tells in The Daily Beast how some Pastors chose to celebrate Presidents Day this year. And we're afraid it isn't an isolated incident. From the article:

At a time when some people confuse losing an election with living under tyranny, it’s perhaps no surprise that a day set aside for marking past presidents’ birth has become, for some, a day for praying for the current president’s death.



Praying for President Obama’s death has become a sick cottage industry for some evangelicals on the lunatic fringe. Bumper stickers, T-shirts, and teddy bears are sold with the wholesome-sounding slogan “Pray for Obama” but tagged with the more troublesome “Psalm 109:8”—which reads “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership” followed by “May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.”

“If you have an evil leader above you, you pray that Satan will stand by his side and you ask God to make his children fatherless.”

In Wingnut circles, it’s known as the “Imprecatory Prayer.” Offered not just from select pulpits, but increasingly expressed through tweets and forwarded via email, this decidedly un-Christian Christian subculture has found its most enthusiastic advocates in a few Obama Derangement Syndrome-afflicted preachers—notably Orange County’s Wiley Drake and Arizona’s Steven L. Anderson.

Pastor Wiley Drake kicked off this Presidents’ Day Weekend with an email blast to his supporters saying “Imprecatory Prayer is now our DUTY” and announcing a daily teleconference call to advance the cause. Drake has been an enthusiastic advocate of imprecatory prayer since he announced that God answered his call with the murder of Kansas abortion clinic doctor George Tiller in church last May. “George Tiller was far greater in his atrocities than Adolf Hitler,” Drake said at the time, “so I am happy. I am glad that he is dead.” This emboldened him to add “the usurper that is in the White House … B. Hussein Obama” to the list said in his church on Sundays.

con'td here

If you feel up to it, here is an AP video with excerpts of Christianist Pastor Steven L. Anderson's sermon. Warning, this video may test your confidence in humanity.

1 comment:

pd said...

RE: Fake Christians and Obama Hate...

I would not be surprised if the roots of this are from the the Southern Baptist Convention, which claims to be the second-largest denomination in America. Primarily founded during the debate about slavery just prior to the Civil War. It gave "moral" cover to the institution of Slavery. Tradition dies hard and as truth would have it, Pastor Wiley Drake is a former vice president of the "Convention". (surprise!)

The interesting thing is that Republicans learned after Goldwater that they needed the south to win and more so they needed uncritical unthinkers to vote against their own best interests. The Kennedy years and the civil rights movement and the other Baptists a la Dr. King, galvanized white males in the south to leave the democratic party and go republican. The Republican Leadership also White males held there nose and opened the "tent".

The Southern Baptist Convention is not all bad. It produced Jimmy Carter and others like him. They are now leading a succession or schism in "The Convention"

This could be a rare opportunity for democrats to divide this block and sew doubt.

Without evangelicals the republicans can not win a national race. They can't do it with just the 1%. An alternate voice taking a fresh look at Christ's own words and his work would do wonders and Jimmy Carter is well down this road.

Before anything else Pres. Carter is an ordained minister.