Obama-haters are perverting Christianity
November 20, 2009
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November 20, 2009
Forty-six years ago this weekend, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in his motorcade in Dallas.
Lee Harvey Oswald, the gunman captured and charged with the murder of the 35th president, appeared motivated by obscure political grievances.
Oswald didn't live long enough to explain his reasons in open court. He was murdered by a man with big-time mob ties and more obscure reasons two days later.
Jack Ruby, Oswald's killer, died in prison years later, but his motives for killing the man who murdered the president remain cloaked in mystery and speculation to this day.
Still, of all the unanswered questions swirling around the murder of an American president on an unbearably sad weekend 46 years ago, few people -- even the most conspiratorially minded -- think religion was a triggering agent.
Even the most hard-core, gun-toting Protestant of the most militant backwoods church wouldn't have nursed a big enough grudge against the only Catholic president of the United States to kill him.
The fervent anti-Communism and right-wing paranoia of the early 1960s had yet to produce the kind of "Christians" who could pray for the president's death and call it a religious duty with a straight face.
But after four decades of culture wars, mounting frustration with pluralism and a realization that a constitutional theocracy isn't likely in America, some "believers" are allowing their inner Satan to call the shots.
Two generations after Kennedy was assassinated, there are so-called "Christians" who preach the murder of President Barack Obama from the pulpit.
Earlier this year, the Rev. Wiley Drake of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif., instructed his followers to pray for Obama's death. Presidential candidate Alan Keyes' former running mate called down curses on Mr. Obama, based on prayers of vengeance from the Psalms.
In Tempe, Ariz., Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church called for Mr. Obama's death on the eve of his visit to Phoenix earlier this year.
One of Pastor Anderson's followers attended an Obama speech the next day with an assault weapon he is legally licensed to carry in the open.
For Christians who eschew such violent drama, but want to express their approval of the sentiment, T-shirts with a sly reference to Old Testament scripture make the same point without attracting the attention of the Secret Service.
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