{"id":12551,"date":"2007-08-15T13:33:15","date_gmt":"2007-08-15T17:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12551.html"},"modified":"2007-08-15T13:33:15","modified_gmt":"2007-08-15T17:33:15","slug":"when-religion-and-politics-go-horribly-awry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/when-religion-and-politics-go-horribly-awry\/","title":{"rendered":"When religion and politics go horribly awry"},"content":{"rendered":"

As many readers know, I worked at Americans United for Separation of Church and State for several years, and dealt with a lot of controversies dealing with houses of worship intervening in political campaigns, which is prohibited under federal tax law. Yesterday, my former colleagues found a good example<\/a> — but got an unexpected response.<\/p>\n

In a complaint to the IRS, Americans United’s Lynn said Dr. Wiley S. Drake, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, issued a press release Aug. 11 endorsing Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.<\/p>\n

Drake’s press release was issued on church letterhead. He also endorsed Huckabee on a church-affiliated radio show and featured a Huckabee campaign official.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By any reasonable measure, Rev. Drake crossed the legal line. If he wanted to endorse Huckabee in his personal capacity, that’s his business, but he used his tax-exempt, non-profit religious ministry to intervene in the Republican presidential primary. Clearly, that’s a no-no.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Drake bragged about his endorsement and urged other Southern Baptists to back Huckabee, too. On his radio show, Drake said, “I believe Mike Huckabee is, indeed, a man that I can endorse. As Second Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention, I put out a press release to that effect.”<\/p>\n

So, Americans United filed a complaint with the IRS. The funny part came when Drake heard the news.
\n
\nFollowing Drake’s press release about Huckabee, Drake issued another press release, calling on his allies to make “imprecatory” prayers against my former colleagues. From Drake’s statement<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In light of the recent attack from the enemies of God I ask the children of God to go into action with Imprecatory Prayer. Especially against Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I made an attempt to go to them via Matt 18:15 but they refused to talk to me. Specifically target Joe Conn or Jeremy Learing. They are those who lead the attack.<\/p>\n

Imprecatory prayer, is now our duty<\/p>\n

Now that all efforts have been exhausted, we must begin our Imprecatory Prayer, at the key points of the parliamentary role in the earth where we live.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For those unfamiliar with the theological concept, Drake is effectively urging people to ask God to do bad things to Americans United employees. (Most Christian denominations don’t accept the idea of imprecatory prayers, but a handful are really into it.)<\/p>\n

Here’s the rub: Drake asked his followers to “target Joe Conn or Jeremy Learing.” Except, Jeremy’s last name is “Leaming.”<\/p>\n

So, here’s the theological question of the day: if a bunch of people pray for God to punish some guy named “Jeremy Learing,” who had nothing to do with this incident, does it still count? What, if anything, happens to Jeremy Leaming?<\/p>\n

And what, pray tell, is Drake thinking violating federal tax law and asking God to strike at those who dared to point it out?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As many readers know, I worked at Americans United for Separation of Church and State for several years, and dealt with a lot of controversies dealing with houses of worship intervening in political campaigns, which is prohibited under federal tax law. Yesterday, my former colleagues found a good example — but got an unexpected response. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}