Good old Biblical hatred

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Just when you thought Christian conservatives couldn’t get any weirder or meaner, they surprise you. Turns out, lots of Christian conservative have been avidly buying up merchandise invoking a Bible verse that wishes death and a single term in office for some unnamed “his.” People who distribute this charming little tidbit apparently routinely do so under the heading, “Obama prayer.” Fun. This is yet more evidence of my long-standing argument that, in the United States, the claim, “I’m a Christian” is totally meaningless because one can find “Christians,” self-styled, on both sides of every major controversy in the history of the Republic, from the Revolution, through slavery (pro-slavery Christians? You betcha) and women’s rights and temperance right up to racial segregation and lesbian/gay civil rights. Part of the problem is precisely this impressive elasticity of the Bible, which contains everything one could want, from the morally sublime injunctions of Jesus to love thy neighbor to the sorts of imprecatory prayers/curses that modern Christian conservatives use to express their opposition to the current President.