Obama Pardons a Turkey, Pastor Spares a President (Coincidence?)

Perhaps they are fitting signs that the season of good will is at hand. President Obama pardoned a turkey, and Pastor Wiley Drake said he'd stop praying for Obama's death.

Wiley, a Southern Baptist pastor from Southern California who gained notoriety (and a Secret Service visit) last June after announcing on a Fox News Radio broadcast that he was praying for Obama's death, says he has changed his mind. Now, Drake is praying for Obama to live -- so that he can be put on trial for treason and executed.

"I am calling for all of God's people and prayer warriors to cease the imprecatory prayer, and pray for Mr. Obama's PROTECTION until he can be properly tried for treason," Drake said in a recent statement. As he explained to Religion News Service on Nov. 24, "We want him alive so we can prosecute him and then give him the death penalty."
Well, I guess that's a start, but Drake's explanation of his epiphany may raise other questions. According to Drake, a former second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention who was the vice presidential running mate in 2008 to Alan Keyes, his change of heart resulted from watching a Nov. 18 video sermon by James David Manning, pastor at ATLAH World Missionary Church in New York.

"I have asked men everywhere please do you no harm," Manning said in remarks he addressed to "Barack Hussein the long-legged mack daddy Obama," according to the Associated Baptist Press. ("Mack daddy," as ABP notes, is slang "for a slick womanizer or conspicuously successful pimp.")

"I do not want to see anyone attempt, dream about, think about or ever discuss assassinating you," Manning continued. "It is most important to you and to my savior Jesus that you live, and that you live a long life, but that you live that we might be able to bring you to trial. You see if someone does you harm, and you are not able to be brought to trial, then we lose the opportunity of proving our statements that you are not the president of the United States of America. You are not. You are an illegal alien, a usurper."

Drake took Manning's charitable counsel to heart, and issued a statement the next day "calling for all of God's people and prayer warriors to cease the imprecatory prayer." Imprecatory prayer is essentially praying for "bad things to happen to bad people" (as this RNS story explains), and it draws on some Old Testament traditions, such as David praying to God to vanquish his enemies. Imprecatory prayer is rarely used today -- or at least few want to admit to it, much less boast about it -- and Southern Baptists leaders last June rejected Drake's Christian fatwa.

No word from the Southern Baptist leadership on Drake's latest take, but even the White House turkey got a no-hard-feelings trip to Disneyland along with his pardon. And that's just a few miles down the interstate from Wiley's church. (Coincidence, or providence?)