If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough. - Mario Andretti

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Christianity.  It’s about love and respect for your fellow man, working to make the world a better place, doing the right thing… and wishing death upon the people who turned you in to the IRS.

Wiley S. Drake, a Buena Park pastor and a former national leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, called on his followers to pray for the deaths of two leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

The request was in response to the liberal group’s urging the IRS on Tuesday to investigate Drake’s church’s nonprofit status because Drake endorsed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for president on church letterhead and during a church-affiliated Internet radio show.

Drake said Wednesday he was “simply doing what God told me to do” by targeting Americans United officials Joe Conn and Jeremy Leaming, whom he calls the “enemies of God.”

“God says to pray imprecatory prayer against people who attack God’s church,” he said. “The Bible says that if anybody attacks God’s people, David said this is what will happen to them. . . . Children will become orphans and wives will become widows.”

Imprecatory prayers are alternately defined as praying for someone’s misfortune, or an appeal to God for justice.

“Let his days be few; and let another take his office,” the prayer reads. “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”

Let’s see.  Anyone who wants the church to be separated from the state is an enemy of God and deserves to die.  Sounds almost Muslim, doesn’t it?  They should translate his words into Arabic, I’m sure Hizbollah would appreciate them.

Update: I anticipate the usual responses.  This is just one guy, he doesn’t speak for all Christians, blah blah blah.  I suppose it’s inconsequential that he was president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has, according to its website, “16 million members who worship in more than 42,000 churches in the United States.” But I’m sure the views of this pastor are completely out of line with the other 15,999,999 members.