Wiley Drake's First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park receives tax-exempt status. One of the conditions of this benefit is that no one use church resources to engage in “electioneering,” and yet Drake still used his radio show, run out of the church, and stationary with church letterhead to publicize his endorsement of Mike Huckabee.
So Drake hearts Huckabee. The problem is, Drake clearly doesn't heart U.S. tax law, and especially not the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, who drew Drake's apparent church-resource–aided electioneering to the attention of the IRS. In retaliation for AUSCS's efforts against Drake, he has once again called on his followers to take action – Imprecatory style. Seems he tried this back in August and those damn AUSCS folk are still breathin', their wives unwidowed, their children un-fatherless. His call to action back then:
“In light of the recent attack from the enemies of God I ask the children of God to go into action with Imprecatory Prayer,” Drake said in his Tuesday statement. His supporters should recite Psalms 109:1-31 that also includes, “children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”
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Martin Wisckol obtained this clarification from Drake on his most recent round of fatwas:
“I’m not asking for anybody to die or for anybody to be killed. But with people like (Americans United’s) Barry Lynn, the Bible makes it very clear we should pray imprecatory prayer. … It’s not my hit list, it’s God’s hit list. … It’s so we pray back to God about God’s will. My job is to agree to God. What God does is not up to me.”
Barry Lynn's response, also from Wisckol's blog: “Trying to turn God into some sort of heavenly hit man is repugnant,” Lynn said. “There is more than a whiff of the Taliban in this action.”
He's right – it's much more than a whiff of Taliban. It stinks like an Ayatollah's ass-hole. The psalms in question accuse the psalmer's (Drake's) enemies of hoping for the following:
“May no one treat him kindly or pity his fatherless children.
May his posterity be destroyed, his name cease in the next generation.”
While Drake is to be commened for his proper reading of Scripture and his acknowledgment of the Christian God as a vengeful, death-dealing bastard, he seems to be in massive violation of something Jesus said on some Mount – something about turning the other cheek?
The whole psalm says, “Hey Lord, these dudes righteously dicked with me, and I wish you would dick with them most righteously in return.” It wishes all the evils of one's enemies visited back upon them. Americans United didn't seek to eradicate Drake and all his family from the planet; they merely pointed out that he apparently broke the law, violating the trust placed in him by the U.S. government and taking advantage of his church for political purposes.
Drake's reaction, like the psalm itself, is exactly what you could expect from a petty, if verbose, third-grader.
