Pastor Wiley Drake preaches on most Sundays in a church tucked in between California’s big amusement parks, a place some people refer to as "Wiley World."
The particular Sunday I visited First Southern Baptist Church was the weekend following the Fort Hood tragedy, when U.S. Army psychiatrist, and Muslim, Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, shot and killed 13 people.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Drake said as he addressed the group of about 60 gathered in Buena Park that evening, just down the street from Knott’s Berry Farm. “If they’re a Muslim, they’re a danger to this country.”
Statements like these are a dime a dozen in “Wiley World.” Political correctness isn’t a concern to Drake. And yet, his assertions about Muslims are far from his most controversial. What has garnered him the most media attention is what he said to national radio talk show host Alan Colmes in June.
“Are you praying for his death?" Colmes asked Drake, referring to President Obama. "Yes," Drake replied. "So you're praying for the death of the president of the United States?" Colmes asked. "Yes." "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."
Drake says he regrets the media frenzy caused by the Colmes interview, but he stands by his use of imprecatory prayer, a form of prayer he says is biblically mandated -- an appeal to God that is, unlike most prayers, a request not for something positive but for misfortune, a kind of curse meant to fall on those considered evildoers.
With his gray hair slicked back and a slightly pinkish complexion, Drake sported suspenders and glasses as he explained that his decision to use imprecatory prayers stemmed from a desire to better organize his early morning telephonic prayer meetings. Drake decided praying the Psalms would be one way of redirecting these sessions. But soon, he came to Psalm 109: “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership. May his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”
"That’s the one that got me in trouble," Drake says now.
The problem is that Drake began to recite this prayer, and others like it, while keeping certain people in mind. In the case of Psalm 109? President Barack Obama.
But Drake is far from alone in his use of imprecatory prayers. Pastor Steve Anderson of Faithful World Baptist Church in Tempe, Ariz., also incorporates this form of prayer in his worship. In fact, Frederick Clarkson of Religion Dispatches surmises that Anderson inspired one regular attendant of Faithful World Baptist, 28-year-old Chris Broughton, to show up to a speech by the president with two guns in hand when he issued the following sermon:
"You’re going to tell me that I’m supposed to pray for the socialist devil, murderer, infanticide, who wants to see young children, and he wants to see babies killed through abortion and partial-birth abortion and all these different things," Anderson said, referring to President Obama. "Nope. I’m not gonna pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell."
There are other signs imprecatory prayer is growing in popularity. Beliefnet’s Rabbi Brad Hirschfield writes that Psalm 109 is now a top Google search; it’s even inspired a line of bumper stickers and T-shirts that sinisterly read “Pray for Obama,” while pointing to the Psalm, and in particular, the passage that calls for an end to present leadership, though Gawker recently noted that CafePress, popular purveyor of homemade T-shirts, has stopped selling the items.
But what is it, exactly, that unites people who pray for the death of the president?
Mostly likely, it's a rabid antiabortion stance. Drake "prayed" for abortion doctor George Tiller, and reacted to Tiller’s murder by noting that his death was an answer to those prayers.
Drake insists this isn’t as evil as it sounds.
"I’m not for a Christian or anybody killing somebody," he told me. "That’s God’s business."
Tiller’s death, then, according to Drake, must have been God’s will, and his prayers simply aligned with God’s providence.
When speaking about Obama, Drake often refers to "baby killing." Anderson is also pro-life. And both men believe homosexuality is a sin -- views that fit neatly into not only certain religious camps but political parties as well.
Anderson is a member of the Constitution Party, which is, according to its own site, the third largest political party in the United States in terms of voter registration -- a party that is pro-life, pro-gun and anti-gay. The monthly newsletter, Ballot Access News, puts the party’s voter registration total at more than 400,000 or .44 percent. This is considerably less than the numbers Democrats, Republicans or Independents boast, but still greater than the numbers on record for the Libertarian Party or the Green Party. And Drake himself ran for vice-president of the United States on Alan Keyes’ 2008 ticket as a member of the American Independent Party, the California affiliate of the Constitution Party.
But aside from politics, there is the question of whether people who pray the Psalms in this manner stand on any kind of solid theological ground.
Stephen Chapman from Duke University’s Center for Jewish Studies says Jews and Christians inherited the tradition of imprecatory prayer from the Ancient Near East but used this form of prayer in a specific way: Imprecatory prayers were meant to remind the faithful of the covenant they held with God and the consequences that would follow if that covenant was broken.
Given the New Testament’s message of love and forgiveness, Christians in particular have struggled with what to do with the material ever since, says Chapman.
But Drake argues he’s in good company when it comes to imprecatory prayer. Both Martin Luther and John Calvin prayed this way, he says. Still, there have been other famous theologians, C.S. Lewis for one, who found these kinds of prayers distasteful. Present-day Hebrew scholar Walter Brueggemann has tried to find some kind of middle ground by arguing that the Psalms can serve as a kind of liturgical venting -- a psychological release from the pent-up anger and frustration life continually piles on us.
The Southern Baptist Convention has distanced itself from imprecatory prayer, though Drake himself once served as the SBC’s vice-president; SBC president Dr. Johnny Hunt has called imprecatory prayer unbiblical. But this is where, in a sense, Drake is right and others are wrong. Prayers calling for the downfall of our enemies can be found in the Bible, there’s no arguing that. But the question is: What do we do with the text now?
This isn’t an easy question to answer. Though Drake’s or Anderson’s actions may strike most of us as plainly and abhorrently wrong, same-sex marriage no doubt strikes Drake as decidedly wrong. That's yet another conviction upheld with the help of biblical text, and which is, no matter what fundamentalists argue, clearly open to interpretation. It’s a reality that not even historical context can save us from, and the danger that comes when considering a text as beautifully complicated as the Bible sacred.
But discrediting people like Drake or Anderson should remain a priority, even for those of us who don’t believe in the power of prayer, because in these instances prayer is tantamount to hate speech -- an act of violence that the First Amendment makes difficult to do anything about in the United States. Drake has just recently lifted his call for imprecatory prayer against the president, but only because he wants Obama to live long enough to stand trial for treason. Drake continues to argue that Obama is not a U.S. citizen and that his claim to the presidency is illegitimate as a result. But Drake is no doubt using imprecatory prayers on others, and one look at the evidence screams he’s not alone.
Reports of hate crimes against gays and religious groups increased sharply in 2008, according to new FBI data released Monday.
Overall, the number of reported hate crimes increased about 2 percent. These same figures show a nearly 11 percent increase in hate crimes based on sexual orientation, and a nearly 9 percent increase in hate crimes based on religion.
The largest category, racially-motivated hate crimes, fell less than 1 percent.
Among all categories of hate crimes, roughly a third are vandalism or property damage. About 30 percent involve intimidation of some kind, and another 30 percent were physical attacks against people.
The FBI does not compare year-to-year trends in hate crimes, saying the number of agencies reporting changes too much. And in fact, the bureau cautioned that the increase reported Monday might well be due to more agencies tracking such incidents.
In 2008, 2,145 different agencies reported hate crimes incidents, while the year before 2,025 agencies did this reporting.
In total, there were 7,783 hate crimes reported to the FBI last year, and seven murders were categorized as hate crimes.
Half of all hate crimes are motivated by race, according to the FBI. One out of every five is driven by religious bias, and one out of every six is based on sexual orientation bias.
The new statistics come less than a month after President Barack Obama signed a bill expanding those covered by the federal law against hate crimes. Previously, the law had protected those attacked on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin.
The new law signed by Obama now covers crimes based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. It also removes the restriction that federal authorities can launch investigations of victims who were engaged in federally protected activities like voting or free speech.
Islamic nations are mounting a campaign for an international treaty to protect religious symbols and beliefs from mockery -- essentially, a ban on blasphemy.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press show that Algeria and Pakistan have taken the lead in lobbying to bring the matter to a vote in the U.N. General Assembly.
Such a ban would face great resistance in Western nations that enshrine freedom of expression as a fundamental right.
The countries that form the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference are currently lobbying a Geneva-based U.N. committee to accept its plan, a first step for it to eventually be put before the General Assembly.
If that occurs, Muslim countries and their allies in the developing world would stand a decent chance of mustering the simple majority needed in the General Assembly to adopt such a treaty.
Dear Cary,
I've recently realized that I am atheist. Now being that atheists are 1 percent of the population, this could produce a lone sense in anyone. However, I feel especially alone. My husband's family -- I have no family of my own to speak of -- is intensely Roman Catholic and close-knit. I love them very much and have for many years, but their Catholicism is their identity. The holiday and social gatherings all revolve around a conservative Catholic faith and a conservative political base. I have always been the token liberal, politely placing counterpoints to their own. Or simply staying silent with the more reactionary members of the family. It is a somewhat lonely existence as a result of the only other liberal being a poorly read and largely ignorant knee-jerk friend of my husband's.
I just had a baby and do need the support of my husband's family but the constant silence and playing along is causing me depression. I have no real issue with religious people, I'm certainly not one of the in-your-face New Atheist types. But to be unable to share this with even my husband forces me to live an endless lie of church services and religious gatherings. I do not believe in the miracles they constantly trumpet or find comfort in the theological books they offer! I do not feel any kind of supernatural presence in my life or feel that birth control is inherently evil. Yet if I shared these beliefs I would be shunned faster and with more passion than a leprous Nazi with a rotting cheese on her head. I hear the passionate gossip they speak of other wayward family members all the time!
I look down at my son and realize I even must lie to him. I must parrot the tired myths to him or else risk the natural talkative nature of children to spill my words to everyone. While there is no real evil in living out religion, any more than there is deciding to dance in a circle in your yard with a flowerpot every day, it is not some truth. Nor is it a surefire cure for what ails you. To me it represents wasted time and effort. I do not know what to do because I love these goodhearted people. They are the only family I have. My constant silence and lies depress me greatly because I love them so much.
Thank you for your consideration of my issue.
Surrounded by Saints
Dear Surrounded,
Is faith a matter of choice? Is it an act of will? Are we therefore to be held accountable for the presence or absence of faith in our lives?
I don't see how that can be.
Is it not possible to be a person of goodwill who honestly has no faith? If people who profess to have faith cannot accept that, then it seems to me they lack some essential element of understanding.
How could people of faith accept as a miracle an event in which faith came unbidden to someone, and yet condemn the opposite but equally plausible event in which faith did not come unbidden, or departed unbidden never to return? Why should one occurrence be treated with reverence and the other with scorn, if they are both equally mysterious in this putatively mysterious, god-infused universe?
I would think that people of both good faith and goodwill would accept your atheism as simply another miracle.
But I am obviously not living in the real world.
If the people around you lack deep understanding and intellectual capacity, what is to be done? I do not know. Can they be educated? Not by you.
If they cannot accept your difference then that is their own personal hell; that is their tragic incapacity of perception.
If you would like something to read, let me suggest the estimable Terry Eagleton's small book, "Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate."
Let's hope that there is a God, and that she shows her hand in such a way that these people are struck with sudden holy forgiveness, and that they see, in this moment of wholly improbable struckness, how you, too, and your atheism, are part of their perfect godly world.
And let us hope that this merciful God tells them, in a few simple words, to leave you the fuck alone and not try to convert you.
Wouldn't that be a nice kind of God to have?
What? You want more advice?
The Washington Times has been having a rough few weeks. There was a big shake-up at the conservative paper recently, with new top executives coming in and the executive editor getting kicked out, with the staff not informed of his departure for days afterwards. Tuesday was yet another bad day for the Times and its beleaguered staffers.
For one thing, there was a problem with a blast from the past, Editor Emeritus Wesley Pruden, and his latest column. Pruden has always been known for having views on race that might generously be described as disturbing, but he went all out in an attack on President Obama:
Mr. Obama, unlike his predecessors, likely knows no better, and many of those around him, true children of the grungy '60s, are contemptuous of custom. Cutting America down to size is what attracts them to "hope" for "change." It's no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of "the 57 states" is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.
(Hat-tip to Gawker.)
Then there's RIchard Miniter, the paper's editorial page editor, who's been MIA for some time now. Now, it seems, we know why: He's reportedly filing a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging among other things that he was forced to attend one of the mass weddings put on by the Unification Church, whose leader founded the paper.
American women will pay the price for the Democratic dithering that allowed Saturday's passage of the Stupak-Pitts amendment, a worm virus inserted into the House healthcare reform bill with surgical precision. But the Democratic Party will suffer collateral damage.
Stupak-Pitts isn't just "the biggest restriction on women's right to choose in our generation," as Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado puts it; it's also evidence that on abortion the Democratic Party is now captive, just like the GOP, to Christian conservatism. Of course, Republicans traded away their party's moderate wing for real electoral gains, a base that propelled them to power for decades. The Democrats, already in power, sucker-punched themselves, and all they have to show for it is a big fat shiner in the shape of Bart Stupak's knuckles.
But if Stupak, a former state trooper from Michigan, provided the muscle, his partner, Joe Pitts -- a Pennsylvania Republican with decades in the trenches of the antiabortion battle -- may have brought the brains, and more, a new Christian right coalition custom tailored for the Democratic Party's growing religious conservatism. Stupak is Roman Catholic; Pitts is evangelical. Both are members of the predominantly evangelical organization called the Family; Stupak lives in its C Street house. Together, they're poster boys for the evangelical/conservative Catholic alliance known as "co-belligerency," a culture war strategy designed to take territory within the Democratic Party as well the GOP.
Stupak, the Democratic co-chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus, insists that his amendment does nothing more than ensure that the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of federal funds for abortions, is carried over into healthcare reform. Even some of Stupak's angriest critics within the party concede that Stupak might actually believe that -- nobody has ever accused him of being a subtle legislator. (Though Stupak himself, long known for his amiability, now boasts that he was hiding his "wolfiness" all along.) But the facts are plain: Stupak-Pitts will use the Hyde Amendment as a lever with which to radically roll back abortion rights, effectively strong-arming private insurers -- most of which will be enmeshed with the federal government now -- into abandoning coverage for abortions.
Much is being made in the media about the role played by the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, which lobbied hard for the amendment. "We just have to accept this as a Catholic thing," goes the new conventional wisdom. Leaving aside the fact that a strong majority of American Catholics are pro-choice, that story line obscures the increasingly significant role played by evangelical conservatives within the Democratic Party.
Start with Stupak and Pitts themselves. Although Stupak is a Catholic, he's lived since at least 2002 in the C Street house run by the Family, which cultivates political leaders on behalf of a long-term vision of what Joe Pitts, speaking at last year's National Prayer Breakfast (the group's only public event), called "God-led government." After the summer sex scandals of Sen. John Ensign, Gov. Mark Sanford and former Rep. Chip Pickering, C Streeters all, made the Capitol Hill address infamous, Stupak denied any knowledge about the house he lives in. "I don't know what you're talking about," Stupak told Michigan reporters when asked about his residence in the house, where he's been enjoying below-market rent for the last seven years, courtesy of C Street's tax-exempt status as a church. But when the Los Angeles Times asked Stupak about his role there in 2002, he pleaded secrecy instead of ignorance: "We sort of don't talk to the press about the house."
That's putting it mildly. In its internal documents, the Family refers to itself as an "invisible organization" and the "prayer cells" into which it organizes politicians as "invisible ‘believing groups.'" That doesn't make it a conspiracy. Rather, the Family represents the soft-sell side of conservative evangelicalism, a social movement that goes beyond -- or maybe beneath -- pulpit pounding and political purity in pursuit of ideological influence on both sides of the aisle. Longtime Family leader Doug Coe, dubbed the "stealth persuader" on Time magazine's list of the 25 most influential evangelicals, declares in a sermon delivered to evangelical leaders that "the more invisible you can make your organization, the more influence it will have."
Joe Pitts can testify to that. It's a safe bet that until Stupak-Pitts, few Americans beyond Pennsylvania Amish country had even heard of the avuncular Republican, a former gym teacher who rarely attaches his name to legislation. And yet he's been a driving force in the antiabortion fight for more than three decades. It was Pitts, a "core" member of the Family, who helped bring antiabortion politics into the organization back in the early 1980s. The Family's focus has always tended toward foreign affairs and economics; Pitts merged the two with the red-hot politics of the abortion wars, quietly exporting free-market fundamentalism and draconian social policy overseas. Pitts and Stupak have joined forces on that front before, teaming up to try to turn President Bush's underfunded but laudable President's Emergency Relief for AIDS initiative into an antiabortion crusade. What they couldn't achieve abroad, they've now brought back home, and then some.
They had plenty of help, starting at the Family's C Street House. It's home not just to Stupak but also to antiabortion Democrats Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania and Heath Shuler of North Carolina, and two of the Senate's fiercest abortion foes, Oklahoma's Tom Coburn -- an obstetrician who once mused on applying the death penalty to abortion providers -- and South Carolina's Jim DeMint, famous for pledging to make healthcare reform Obama's Waterloo. Other Family associates lining up behind Stupak-Pitts include evangelicals Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., John Tanner, D-Tenn., and Lincoln Davis, a Democrat from Tennessee who once proclaimed that no Republican could "outgun, out-pray, or out-family me."
These Family ties don't mean that Stupak-Pitts is a plot hatched at C Street. The Family offers politicians a "worldview," not a vote machine. In the documents stored at the archive of the Fellowship Foundation -- one of the Family's multiple nonprofit entities -- at evangelical Wheaton College, congressional briefings typically lead off with reminders that the Family's prayer groups don't take direct action but rather facilitate the behind-the-scenes relationships that lead to action. "One person grows desirous of pursuing an action," Sen. Sam Brownback, a Family man and former C Street resident, explained the process to me, "and others pull in behind."
Which raises the question: Who's pulling whom? Did backbencher Bart Stupak really come up with the bluff that led pro-choice Democrats to abandon not one but two compromises, one of which Stupak himself seemed to be signing off on earlier this summer? Or was it Pitts, an abortion-wars warrior since the 1970s, and a longtime leader of the House Values Action Team -- an off-the-record caucus of religious right organizations and members of Congress -- who drew up the blueprint?
Neither Stupak nor Pitts is talking. Of course, if they just keep quiet, the press will pin it on the bishops -- who, to be fair, are more than happy to take credit. That version of events neglects the role of relationships forged within the evangelical context of the Family -- a group founded in the spirit of virulent anti-Catholicism, and which maintains to this day that being Catholic brings you no closer to Christ than being Jewish or a Muslim -- and the growing evangelical movement within the Democratic Party. A source close to the Faith Table, a gathering of ostensibly progressive Christians helmed by evangelical leader Jim Wallis, notes that the group has been agitating for Stupak-Pitts for months, with Wallis declaring Stupak-Pitts the most important vote of the year.
He may have been right about that. Right now, even the diluted healthcare reform bill that's limping toward more mauling in the Senate looks like the result of a historic vote. But as a weather vane, Stupak-Pitts tells us which way the wind is blowing. Last time the Democrats possessed this much power in Washington, the Dixiecrats tried to hold the party hostage. Now, it's the faith-based Democrats. Dixiecrats were racists, plain and simple; the faith-based Democrats are a more complicated bunch, a mix of genuinely moral conservatives, many of them to the left on economic issues, political cowards, and default Blue Dogs. They're anti-choice and anti-gay but, by God, they're about love, not hate, a gentler fundamentalism, a faith based in the conflation of Christianity and the Constitution, not the substitution of one for the other. So that's progress, right?
"Sure," says the Faith Table dissident who reports that the council of "progressive Christians" was not willing to even consider any deal that didn't leap past the Hyde Amendment into a new country -- or maybe it's old -- of abortion restrictions. "If you're playing horseshoes with James Dobson."
Research support provided by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute.
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