That’s an ancient prayer, of course, commonly invoked by the Jekyll-and-Hyde authors of the Jewish scriptures (such as Psalm 58) that Christians arrogantly call the Old Testament.

Alas, this particular sort of prayer is one aspect of ancient Judaism (among other religions) that many Christians seem only too eager to embrace as their own.

It’s an embrace that was on full display twenty years ago in stories like this one:

They Pray For Justice’s Death (Chicago Sun-Times/UPI; June 2, 1986)

LOS ANGELES: As Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. gave an outdoor commencement speech yesterday at Loyola Marymount Law School, a plane chartered by a Baptist congregation circled overhead trailing a banner that said: “Pray for Death: Baby-killer Brennan.”

The plane, chartered by the Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles, made its flight a few hours after the Rev. R. L. Hymers Jr. denounced Brennan as a “baby killer” and exhorted 400 members of the congregation to pray for Brennan’s death so that he could be replaced with a judge opposed to abortion….

More recently, it’s an embrace that Christians like Pastor Wiley Drake seem to revel in as they beg their allegedly loving gOd to kill abortion doctors, the leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and that evil “usurper” currently living in the White House.

And now suddenly, this Christmas season, we have yet another example to ponder:

An Ugly Finale For Health-Care Reform (Dana Milbank/The Washington Post; Dec 21)

Going into Monday morning’s crucial Senate vote on health-care legislation, Republican chances for defeating the bill had come down to a last, macabre hope. They needed one Democratic senator to die — or at least become incapacitated.

At 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon — nine hours before the 1 a.m. vote that would effectively clinch the legislation’s passage — Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) went to the Senate floor to propose a prayer. “What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight,” he said. “That’s what they ought to pray.”

It was difficult to escape the conclusion that Coburn was referring to the 92-year-old, wheelchair-bound Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) who has been in and out of hospitals and lay at home ailing. It would not be easy for Byrd to get out of bed in the wee hours with deep snow on the ground and ice on the roads — but without his vote, Democrats wouldn’t have the 60 they needed.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the number-two Democratic leader, went to the floor to complain about Coburn’s unholy prayer, which followed an unsuccessful request from Democrats for an earlier vote because of Byrd’s “significant health problems.” Said Durbin: “When it reaches a point where we’re praying, asking people to pray, that senators wouldn’t be able to answer the roll call, I think it has crossed the line.”…

The Oklahoman [Coburn], who led the effort last week to stall proceedings by forcing an hours-long reading of legislative language, had already lobbed a grenade onto the floor when he said that, because of the legislation, Medicare recipients are “going to die sooner.”

On Saturday, Coburn likened the current situation to the period preceding the Civil War. “The crisis of confidence in this country is now at an apex that has not seen in over 150 years, and that lack of confidence undermines the ability of legitimate governance,” he said. “There’s a lot of people out there today who…will say, ‘I give up on my government,’ and rightly so.”

Earlier Sunday, Coburn, a medical doctor by training, held another news conference and accused Democrats of “corruption” in drafting the bill. He then went out onto the floor two hours later to discuss his prayer that one of the Democrats wouldn’t make it to the chamber. A few days earlier, Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Sam Brownback (Kansas) joined a public prayer for the bill’s defeat — but Coburn, as usual, went further.

Durbin, learning of Coburn’s prayer, went to the floor 45 minutes later to challenge him to a rhetorical duel. Coburn declined to return. “I don’t think we should be wishing misfortune on either side of the aisle,” Durbin said of his absent colleague.

Coburn was wearing blue jeans, an argyle sweater and a tweed jacket with elbow patches when he walked back into the chamber a few minutes before 1 a.m. He watched without expression when Byrd was wheeled in, dabbing his eyes and nose with tissues, his complexion pale. When his name was called, Byrd shot his right index finger into the air as he shouted “aye,” then pumped his left fist in defiance.

Unprecedented Reprehensible Conduct On Floor Of The United States Senate (Margot Fernandez/Tucson Liberal Christian Examiner; Dec 23)

Nothing but a direct quote will serve to start our discussion of the religious orientation of The Family, or the C-Street Group in Washington D. C. The afternoon before the recent Senate procedural vote on the health care reform bill, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) advised the American people to pray that harm would come to a Democratic senator in order to impede the passage of health-care reform.

Coburn said, “What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray.”

This remark was widely taken as a reference to the age and infirmity of Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), who was assisted into the Senate in a wheelchair to vote. In fact, it was taken as a call to pray that somehow Senator Byrd would die before the vote.

Considering the source–Coburn is a member of The Family, an arch-conservative Dominionist group of elected officials that also includes the President of Uganda and the sponsor of the “kill the gays” law that is presently before the Ugandan legislature–it isn’t surprising that a person of Coburn’s views would ask God to kill someone. [For a taste of Coburn's understanding of homosexuality, see item 10B in the entry I posted on Dec 28, 2004.] These are the people who would wear the Psalm 109 t-shirt that was conceived by their fellows in the blogosphere, asking God to take care of the Obama problem by killing him. These are the same people who brought firearms to political meetings last August.

Give me a choice between these monsters and atheism and I’ll take atheism anytime. Their concept of God is so addled that I would say that they can’t be taken seriously, except that they are! I can absolutely imagine thousands of Americans dropping to their knees, joining hands and asking God to kill a Democrat. The family that prays together, stays together. That is, until they don’t.

Fortunately we have Frank Schaeffer blowing the whistle on these freaks of hatred; his books are out there for us to read, either to clear our heads of this wicked stupidity or to learn just how twisted these people are….

After Coburn Asked Americans To Pray “Somebody” Misses Health Care Vote, Inhofe Skips Today’s Roll Call (Ben Armbruster/ThinkProgress; Dec 22)

Just before the Senate vote on the first of three procedural motions to move its health care reform bill toward final passage, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) appeared to urge Americans to pray that a member of the majority caucus would not show up to vote, thus leaving the Democrats one vote shy of breaking the GOP filibuster:

COBURN: What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray.

As it turned out however, all 100 U.S. senators voted on the measure, which passed on a party-line 60-40 vote. This morning, the Senate health care reform bill jumped the second procedural hurdle, with all 60 senators in the Democratic caucus voting to pass the measure. However, only 39 Republicans voted against passage. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) was the Republican who missed the vote.

On C-Span this morning, a caller wondered if perhaps Coburn’s prayer request had “backfire(ed)” against his own party:

CALLER: Yeah doctor. Our small tea bag group here in Waycross, we got our vigil together and took Dr. Coburn’s instructions and prayed real hard that Sen. Byrd would either die or couldn’t show up at the vote the other night. How hard did you pray because I see one of our members was missing this morning. Did it backfire on us? One of our members died? How hard did you pray senator? Did you pray hard enough?

While Barrasso didn’t answer the question directly, he said he didn’t know why Inhofe missed the vote. Both Coburn and Inhofe’s offices did not respond to inquiries from ThinkProgress for comment.

When Coburn asked Americans to pray that a Senator miss these crucial health care votes, he never specified Republican or Democrat.

Update: Roll Call reports that Inhofe “was absent to fly his wife home to Oklahoma in advance of the Christmas holiday but that he is headed back to Washington, D.C., for this week’s remaining votes.”

I dunno, maybe I’m missing something, but I think that if I believed I had a hotline to the Almighty Creator of the Universe, I’d be asking him/her/it/them to help people with health problems long before I’d ever even imagine asking others to join with me in asking him/her/them/it to snuff out those who are daring to try to get people more affordable medical care.

I guess that just reveals the severity of the ignorance that can infect an atheist like me who has never taken the time to get an advanced degree in Christian theology, eh?