Prayer as WMD

I caught wind of this story last week, but was waiting for some better background before I blogged about it. Thankfully, Sara over at Orcinus has all the details.

It goes like this. Dr. Wiley S. Drake is the head of the Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, California, near Disneyland. He has a habit of making overtly political pronouncements, the kind that churches that have tax-exempt status should not be making. He runs a radio show, "Crusader Radio," from his church. His latest pronouncement was an endorsement of Mike Huckabee for the GOP presidential nomination. This caught the attention of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, which filed a complaint with the IRS.

So, called on the carpet, Dr. Drake does not offer a defense of his action or a mea culpa. He calls for his congregation to engage in "imprecatory prayer" against the folks at AUSCS, providing followers with a list of Bible verses to use in the process. Apparently, they meant to call down a curse and bad fortune on AUSCS. This caught the targets a wee bit off guard:

Conn [an official with AUSCS] said he was 'startled' at Drake's reaction to the complaint against Drake's First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park.

'We expected him to try to defend his actions,' Conn said.

'Instead he goes on spiritual blitzkrieg against us, praying for our destruction. He completely glossed over the fact that his actions are clearly a violation of federal tax law.'

As Sara points out, when an imam does something like this, it's called a fatwa. What term shall we use when one of the American Taliban does the same? Love thine enemies indeed!