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Staceyann Chin, National Equality March 10/10/09 photo: Ed Needham
Showing posts with label John Avalon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Avalon. Show all posts

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.