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ALTERNET – Freshman cadet ‘counseled’ for proselytizing in e-mail

Published On: January 30, 2012|Categories: News|0 Comments|

Selected Article Excerpts:

  • Kansas House Speaker Michael O’Neal is resisting calls for his resignation in the wake of controversy over emails about President and Mrs. Obama he forwarded to the Republican caucus. In one of two emails he thought were funny, he compared First Lady Michelle Obama to the Grinch and called her “Mrs. YoMama”; in the second he (perhaps unwittingly) invoked an imprecatory prayer, in effect, calling for the death of the president.
  • O’Neal invoked a line from the Bible, Psalm 109 verse 8 which states: “May his days be few; and let another take his office.”O’Neal laughingly added: “At last — I can honestly voice a Biblical prayer for our president! Look it up — it is word for word! Let us all bow our heads and pray. Brothers and Sisters, can I get an AMEN? AMEN!!!!!!”O’Neal claims he was just wishing that Obama’s days in office would be few. But having advised others to “look it up” it is not clear if he had done so himself and therefore knew that Psalm 109 is a dead serious call on God to strike down his enemies. The very next line, for example, reads: “May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.”
  • “The verse clearly refers to death, not to his days in office,” Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center told AlterNet in an interview. “These are not amusing or harmless words,” he said. “They are calling for someone’s death and they ought to be recognized as such.”
  • In the 90s, imprecatory prayer was most publicly visible among antiabortion militants such as Rev. Matthew Trewhella, leader of the Milwaukee-based Missionaries to the Pre-born, and well-known for issuing imprecations against everyone from abortion providers to public officials who got in his way. But in recent years, the practice has gone so mainstream that it is has become acceptable to many to emblazon it on coffee mugs and to include it in supposedly funny emails.
  • For example, Christian Right activist and former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenshmitt issued an imprecatory prayer in 2009 based on Psalm 109 against Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. It was unambiguously titled: “Imprecatory Prayers Against Anti-Jesus Barry Lynn and Mikey Weinstein”. He read it aloud as his Evening Prayer posted on You Tube:“Let us pray. Almighty God, today we pray imprecatory prayers from Psalm 109 against the enemies of religious liberty, including Barry Lynn and Mikey Weinstein, who issued press releases this week attacking me personally. God, do not remain silent, for wicked men surround us and tell lies about us. We bless them, but they curse us. Therefore find them guilty, not me. Let their days be few, and replace them with Godly people. Plunder their fields, and seize their assets. Cut off their descendants, and remember their sins, in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

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