Praying for Harm

“Imprecatory prayers,” which ask God to harm another person, have been affirmed as acceptable speech under the First Amendment, according to a story from  Religion News Service :

Is it okay to ask God to do harm to another person? The theology of such “imprecatory prayer” may be a matter of debate, but a Dallas judge  has ruled it is legal , at least as long as no one is actually threatened or harmed.

District Court Judge Martin Hoffman on Monday (April 2) dismissed a lawsuit brought by Mikey Weinstein against a former Navy chaplain who he said used “curse” prayers like those in Psalm 109 to incite others to harm the Jewish agnostic and founder of the  Military Religious Freedom Foundation  and his family.

Hoffman said there was no evidence that the prayers by Gordon Klingenschmitt, who had been endorsed for the Navy chaplaincy by the Dallas-based Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches, were connected to threats made against Weinstein and his family or damage done to his property.

According to the lawsuit, Klingenschmitt posted a prayer on his website urging followers to pray for the downfall of MRFF.

While it’s pretty clear, as the judge agreed, that the Constitution does protect this kind of speech, one has to wonder about the logic of a man who proclaims himself a Christian being so eager to hurl God’s wrath at his personal enemies. Furthermore, it seems to be a perversion of the text itself. True, Psalm 109 contains lines imploring God’s judgment:

¹⁴  Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD,
And do not let the sin of his mother be blotted out.
¹⁵  Let them be before the LORD continually,
That He may cut off their memory from the earth;
¹⁶  Because he did not remember to show lovingkindness,
But persecuted the afflicted and needy man,
And the despondent in heart, to put  them  to death.
¹⁷  He also loved cursing, so it came to him;
And he did not delight in blessing, so it was far from him.
¹⁸  But he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment,
And it entered into his body like water
And like oil into his bones.
¹⁹  Let it be to him as a garment with which he covers himself,
And for a belt with which he constantly girds himself.
²⁰  Let this be the reward of my accusers from the LORD,
And of those who speak evil against my soul.

. . . but it ends, like nearly every psalm, with a call for God’s will to be done, on his time and in his way. So it’s not clear this really even qualifies as an “imprecatory prayer.” To (mis)use the text as a kind of magical incantation against a personal enemy utterly misses the point of the prayer, to say nothing of what it reveals about the person attempting to wield it in such a manner.

Nevertheless, the judge’s decision is certainly the right one from a legal standpoint. As the defending attorney argued, if a Biblical psalm were found to be too provocative for legal protection, “half the churches, synagogues and mosques in this country [would] have to be shut down.”