hating on the Presidents (from the pulpit?!)

From the WaPo's Colbert King in the C-J...

King opens with some brutal "pastoral" examples...

On Aug. 16, pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Ariz., told his congregation that he prays for the death of President Obama. In a sermon titled “Why I Hate Barack Obama,” Anderson preached: “I'm not going to pray for his good, I'm going to pray he dies and goes to hell.”

Anderson is not the only man of the cloth to wish widowhood upon Michelle Obama. In June, the Rev. Wiley Drake of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., said he was praying for the President's death.

Anderson, however, was explicit in his wish. “I'd like him to die of natural causes. I don't want him to be a martyr; we don't need another holiday. I'd like to see him die, like Ted Kennedy, of brain cancer.”

I pray God will not answer their petitions....

There's something loose in the land, an ugliness and hatred directed toward Barack Obama, the nation's first African-American President, that takes the breath away.

Yes and no. Similar hatred-- if not more of it-- was directed at Presidents Bush and Clinton. King refers to Obama's race, implying that race is a primary factor in the ugliness. While you can't dismiss the existence of such malice, the data do not support that explanation as primary.

We've seen similarly despicable things said on the left, including by church leaders. So, conservatives have no monopoly on saying stupid things.