This past summer I blogged about the creepy but popular southern California preacher Wiley Drake praying for God to kill Barack Obama. With the passage of healthcare reform, he’s added to his list of imprecatory-prayer targets, as the Daily Beast reports (WebCite cached article):
As Randy Neugebauer cops to shouting “baby killer” on the House floor, a pastor who ran for VP with Alan Keyes has asked for the death of all 219 Democrats who voted for yesterday’s bill.
The vitriol stemming from yesterday’s health-care vote—from Randy Neugebauer’s shout of “baby-killer” aimed at pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak on the House floor to slurs shouted at John Lewis and Barney Frank from crowds outside the Capitol building—has reached a new apex: a call for the death of all 219 Democrats who voted for the bill, through the power of prayer.
Orange Country Pastor Wiley Drake fired off an email to his supporters this morning, telling them that all 219 Democrats have been placed on the “imprecatory prayer list.” “We’ll remember in November and pray Psalms [sic] 109 while waiting,” he urged, before listing each offending congressman by name in “Satan’s domain in Washington D.C.”
Here’s a link to Psalm 109, if you care to read it. It’s essentially a long, whiney prayer that God strike down some horrible enemy and leave his children fatherless and his wife a widow (Ps 109:9). I discussed this particular psalm and its political uses earlier; have a look, if you wish.
What a marvelous, enlightened, compassionate sentiment from “the Religion of Love” (i.e. Christianity), which was founded by the man who famously delivered the Sermon on the Mount.
As I’ve blogged before, Wiley is not some “fringe” preacher that no one pays attention to. He is, in fact, quite influential, and well-known and respected in Religious Right circles. He’s served on the board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant organization in the country and the “flagship” denomination of the Religious Right. He was also Alan Keyes‘ vice-presidential candidate in 2008 (on the “America’s Independent Party” ticket).
I’m not quite sure why Drake is concentrating solely on the 219 House representatives who voted for healthcare reform and isn’t praying for the deaths of the Senate members who voted the same way … but I’m sure he has his reasons. Those reasons may not make sense, but I’m sure he has them.
Also, Jesus Christ himself was a healer, so I’m not sure how or why Drake views healthcare as “Satanic” … but he does. Again, I’m sure he has his reasons, but I doubt they’d be comprehensible to anyone but another ferocious, delusional fundamentalist Christian religionist like himself.