If only Christians read the Bible…

So the new hip conservative thing is t-shirts and bumper stickers and stuff that say “Pray for Obama: Psalms 109:8.” Psalm 109 is about praying for the death of an evil person. Ha ha, calling for the death of the President, isn’t that fun and patriotic?

Here’s what really struck me in this Christian Science Monitor story about it, though:

Twitter user Cheri Douglas felt compelled to share the psalm with others. Reached by phone, she said she found it on website while searching for Bible passages relating to leadership – a topic on which she writes, speaks, and consults for a living.

Ms. Douglas was unaware of the verses that followed the ones she referenced and doesn’t think that those who shared the psalm wish the president harm.

She didn’t know? I followed a link in the CSM story to her Twitter page, and there’s stuff about God and Jesus there, and I thought… wouldn’t someone who apparently considers her Christianity that important have done something like, oh, maybe, picked up a fucking Bible and read some of it?

(And, she’s a leadership consultant who finds passages about murdering your leaders useful? Are a lot of CEOs lining up to have her in for a team-building session?)

I haven’t taken part of a Christian church service in 20 years and I think it’s nothing more than the mythology of long-dead middle eastern tribespeople, and I recognized it immediately.

It’s not exactly an everyday passage. It’s not even one that I ever remember reading in church when I was a psalmist in high school. But as soon as I heard the quote I remembered the backstory.

(Yes, believe it or not, I was there almost every week, often as an altar boy or leading the congregation in the reading of a psalm. I liked church. I admired our minister and considered him a friend and role model. The people there seemed, for the most part, to be trying to be better people when they were there. But believing weird supernatural stories was a deal-breaker for me.)

You know, the most knowledgeable layperson I have ever met on matters of Christian texts is a dear friend who’s a gay Jew. He reads a lot about religion because it interests him.

Apparently, it’s far less interesting to the people who are loudly proclaiming how important it is.