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By Austin Cline, About.com Guide to Atheism since 1998



Southern Baptist Leader Praying for Obama's Assassination
Saturday June 13, 2009
Loving Christians sometimes seem to love violence and death more than they love other human beings. At least that's the message I have to take away from seeing Christians openly praying and hoping for the death of politicians whose political agenda they disagree with. How is it that Christians imagine that they can get away with endorsing political assassinations but sound pious and moral while doing so?

[Wiley] Drake [former SBC second vice president] said June 2 on "The Alan Colmes Show" that unless Obama repents, he is praying that God will kill the president. Drake said he believes that is what happened to slain abortion provider George Tiller, who was shot to death while attending church in Wichita, Kan., on Sunday, May 31.

Describing the interview on "The Wiley Drake Show" on Crusade Radio June 3, Drake said Colmes invited him on the program because someone had asked him about his initial response to news that Tiller had died.

"I've been a Baptist pastor for a long time, been in the pro-life fight, been face-to-face with Tiller, told him about Jesus, and I've seen many, many others tell him about Jesus over and over and over again," Drake said. "And I've seen horrific things that go on in those death abortuaries -- and that's what they are -- and so my initial response to those people, they said, 'Well what was your response,' and I said, 'Well, in all honesty I have to just respond directly and say I am glad that he's dead.'"

In the Fox interview, Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., called Obama "a usurper" and claimed he is "not an American-born citizen." Challenged for referring to the president as "B. Hussein Obama," Drake denied calling him that because it makes him sound like a Muslim. "I call him that because it's his name," Drake insisted.

Accused of holding views on the fringe of American culture, Drake acknowledged: "It is a fringe point of view, and I take that as a badge of honor. I am on the fringe."

Source: Associated Baptist Press

At least he admits that he's on the fringe, but in doing so he also admits that the majority of Christians in America don't agree with him. I wonder how that makes him feel? What I'd really like to see if for prominent Christian leaders — and especially Southern Baptist leaders — openly, unambiguously, and soundly condemn these views. Conservative evangelical Christians complain about moderate Muslims not doing enough to push back against Muslim extremists, so where is the push-back from moderate Christians against this self-admitted extremist?

Drake said Southern Baptists have lost belief in "imprecatory prayer" -- praying passages from the Psalms where the Psalmist is asking God to bring death and misfortune on his enemies -- and need to regain the practice.

"It is in the Bible, and we are proud to say as Southern Baptists that we believe the Book," he said. "You've got to believe the whole Book, brother, or you don't believe any of it."

Maybe most Christians have dumped the concept of "imprecatory prayer" because they progressed morally and politically beyond the Bronze Age where Drake is trying to draw the concept back out from. Perhaps it's just too much to ask Wiley Drake to behave less like an illiterate Bronze Age sheepherder and more like a 21st century adult. It would be nice if he could make the shift because then he could help move Christians forwards rather than trying to drag them backwards like this.

"You would like for the president of the United States to die?" Colmes asked once more.

"If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around, I am asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers that are throughout the Scripture that would cause him death, that's correct."

Source: Associated Baptist Press

http://atheism.about.com/b/2009/06/13/southern-baptist-leader-praying-for-obamas-assassination.htm

also good comment here:
http://current.com/items/90200365_southern-baptist-leader-prays-for-obamas-death.htm

To me this is just like some Imam issuing a Fatwah, exactly.

i am a pacifist, but stuff like this makes me want to take up arms.