Ever since Pastor Wiley Drake declared not once, but three times, on national radio that he was praying for the death of President Obama, he has been trying to clarify.
Yes, he really does want God to smite Obama. No, it’s not a partisan prayer. Yes, it’s in the Bible, he says, and no, he wasn’t kidding. He’s deadly serious.
The former second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention said he’s merely practicing the age-old art of “imprecatory prayer”—a theological term for praying that bad things happen to bad people.
Imprecatory prayer can turn a verse into curse through reciting Scripture aimed at one’s foes. Rather than asking for, say, healing or a win in the big game, these prayers request that God smite one’s enemies with—among other things—plagues, death and eternal damnation.
“That doesn’t mean I spend every waking hour praying for the death of the president,” said Drake, who leads Buena Park Southern Baptist Church, near Anaheim, Calif. “Of our prayers, 98 percent should be good prayers and 2 percent should be imprecatory.”
Though Scripture says Jesus told his followers to love their enemies and pray for them, the Bible also depicts King David pleading with God to vanquish his adversaries. While famed Christian apologist C.S. Lewis found such imprecatory psalms distasteful and “devilish,” even he could not deny their existence.
Derided by some as a bad Judeo-Christian imitation of voodoo, the literal practice of imprecatory prayer has some newfound fans.
I wonder how these words from Jesus fits into all of this:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’