FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Bad Prayers

Rant Number 386 23 February 2010

May his days be few; may another seize his goods!

May his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow!

Psalm 109, vv.9-10

Imprecatory prayer. A peculiar kind of prayer. The act of uttering a curse, a malediction, like in Psalm 109 above. Praying for bad things for your enemies. Not one of the priest’s favourite prayers, no. But it has some fans in the US, apparently. The object being President Obama, huh! A liberal journalist raged about it online. ‘Wingnuts’ he called the Obanophobes. Hmmm...Had anybody cursed Bush or Cheney when they were in office, would the same delicate writer have blown his top? But that’s by the by.

Cursing prayers are quite Anglican. I kid you not. Just look up the peerless Book of Common Prayer. You’ll spot an interesting service: ‘Commination or Denouncing of God’s Anger and Judgments against sinners.’ To be used on the first day of that almost forgotten Christian Ramadhan, Lent. It is a litany of curses. From idolaters to extortioners, maledictions go out to all. Service still traditionally used on Ash Wednesday at St Sepulchre’s Church, Newgate. A quaint temple near the Old Bailey, London’s Criminal Court. Newgate was once a famous prison - guess originally the curses were meant as a kind of deterrent. Whether they worked is another matter.

The priest has a confession to make. During the Iraq war he was tempted to stand in front of Downing St., then PM Blair’s lair, and recite in a loud voice the Commination service. Yes, vehemently denouncing God’s anger towards Phoney Tony for his sinful, aggressive adventure. Well, maybe ad-libbing a little imprecation of my own. I toyed with the idea but my spiritual director dissuaded me. ‘Fr Frank, don’t do that. Pointless. They’ll ignore you. Or they may take the opportunity of putting you away in a loony bin.’ Yeah, like they did in the old Soviet Union to communism’s critics. What’s new? Anyway, good Fr Augustine’s counsel prevailed.

To be fair, the BCP curses are not directed at anyone’s personal enemies. It is God’s anger against general categories of sinners they express, not personal vindictiveness. The Psalmist’s attitude towards his own enemies is the problem. Never mind the Psalmist’s prayer is against enemies who return evil for good. (‘In return for my love they accuse me, even as I make a prayer for them’ v.4.) But maybe my remarks reflect the individualism of a modern age. The children of the Hebrew Umma saw themselves as one. One holy nation, one consecrated race, one chosen people. Hence the distinction individual/collective would have been meaningless to them. The cause of God’s honour and that of his faithful servants for them was one and the same thing.

I suspect the Psalmist’s unpleasant feelings originated from to the correct idea that wilful opposition to a holy God must invite divine reaction. Unfortunately the Hebrew conception meant that punishment calls for exact requital – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth – and so God’s honour had to be vindicated in strict retaliatory fashion. But the Psalmist’s vindictiveness at times is chilling. ‘Blessed be he who takes your little ones and dashes their heads against the stone’. Just requital or not for what the Babylonians or the Edomites had inflicted on the defeated Jews, a God who commands something like that cannot be the God of Jesus Christ. Sounds more like Ahriman, the Evil Deity of the Manicheans – who else?

Why the imprecations directed especially at Obama, I wonder? Abortion? A great sin, certainly, but many of his predecessors also did virtually nothing about it. Including Republican presidents like Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes. The Middle East? But the American Right is staunchly pro-Israel and Obama so far has done nothing for the Palestinians. Afghanistan? Stupid and wrong but...would any other President act differently? Healthcare? The chief is trying to help the have-nots a little – does that deserve divine wrath? The economy? It would take a superman, a Hercules to taken on the likes of Goldman Sachs and Obama ain’t no Hercules.

Rather than bad, Barack strikes me as ineffectual. Looks like a one-term President. Anyhow, a US President is less powerful than people think. He is severely constrained by the Senate, Congress, Supreme Court, all that gaff. If the nasty curses have to be let loose, dear Wingnuts, there is a wider scope...

Imprecatory prayers. Bad prayers. In more senses than one. First, because, as St Teresa of Avila sharply observes, when God wishes to chastise people he sometimes will answer their prayers. So, all of you who pray vindictive prayers, remember: God knows something you don’t know. The Lord watches and controls the whole, infinite, universal chain of causes and effects, from the lifespan of a gnat on earth to an exploding supernova in the Andromeda galaxy. A person’s death may look desirable from a limited, human point of view, but its remote effects only the Creator fully grasps. And you might not like them. A possible President Joe Biden might have worse in store than Obama. So might ghastly Presidentessa Hillary. As Italians say: ‘Il peggio non e’ morto mai’.

Second, how does prayer work? Mysteriously, the cliché goes. But, according to one trendy school of thought, prayer works chiefly by changing he who prays. So, if a person prays according to Christ’s invitation: ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you’ he will become more and more Christ-like. A better, holier person. Conversely, if he prays bad, vindictive prayers, he’ll gradually find himself become like the opposite of Christ – someone very nasty indeed.

Lastly, phoney Tony again. Look, it is not personal – he has done nothing to me, hence I am not, alhamdulillah, like the vengeful Psalmist. It is just the way he has governed. How he behaved before the Chilcot Inquiry speaks volumes about the man. Totally unrepentant. And smug. Like watching Saddam gloating over hammering the Kurds. Indeed, the former PM implied he’d do the same job on Iran, if he got the chance.

Hard man to wish well to, but I will. ‘God will judge me’ he once said.

I pray He will.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli