Presidential Prayer Team

In yesterday's post I should have explained more fully why I think the Presidential Prayer Team is fascist. In their FAQs they claim that their goal is to pray for leaders of future administrations as well as for Bush. Sounds good, but I see no prayer requests for Al Sharpton, Howard Dean or John Kerry. The only requests are for Bush cabinet members.

There is also a profile of Lt. Gen. William Boykin. Boykin has been in the news for saying that God put Bush in the White House and that his God is bigger than Allah. I guess size does matter. The Prayer Team thinks Boykin is OK.

Let's see. We have a group that requests prayers for one political party and not the other, and extols the virtues of political leaders who insult millions of people around the world. It gets better.

Their Adopt Our Troops Campaign asks us to pray for the President and "his troops." I didn't know that the U.S. military belongs to George W. Bush. They are my troops just as much as they are the President's. This is a democracy, at least for now. But it still gets better.

The goals of Adopt Our Troops are to insure that every member of the armed services is prayed for and to "...counteract the negative aspects of anti-war protests and anti-American sentiment."

I know that calling a group fascist is a serious charge to make, but if that group uses a religious pretext to favor one political party over another, claims that troops in a democratic nation belong to the leader of the spiritually favored party and feels it necessary to elicit prayers to counteract the exercise of our free speech rights then I have to say that the shoe fits and the Presidential Prayer Team should wear it.