Christ Weary of Prayer Warriors:
Apparently, we've pissed off God. No, not the whole Tim Johnson thing - surely, if there is a giant sky wizard who gives a holy shit about earthly affairs, he'd've bled out Barbara Boxer or Mark Dayton, not low-key, conservative Tim Johnson. Nope, America in general has earned the Big Guy/Gal/Thing's ire. At least that's the implication of the latest Prayer Target e-mail the Rude Pundit has received from the Family Research Council (motto: "No, a Dozen or So Guys Wandering Around Together For Years Is Not Kinda Gay"). The Rude Pundit belongs to the FRC's Super-Duper Prayer Team under a nom de rude, and every week we receive our prayin' orders from the FRC's President, Mr. Tony "Please, Sean, Gimme More Face Time" Perkins. And this week, oh, man, we've got some grovelin' to do before the sacred sand-encrusted feet o' Jeeeezus.

Raves Perkins, "Secularism, liberalism and hedonism have made inroads into every sphere of American life. Beliefs and conduct condemned by past generations are now welcome, even in many churches and homes. America's survival is threatened." Now, while "secularism, liberalism and hedonism" are pretty much the ruling triumvirate at the Rude Pundit's on the weekends (two out of three only on weeknights), Perkins wants you to know that we're pretty much fucked unless we "STIR OURSELVES TO FIGHT for our families and to revive Christian culture!" (capitalization and exclamation point verbatim from Perkins). That's right. We're no longer just a placid, hands-together Super-Duper Prayer Team. Oh, no. We're "prayer warriors."

And what's making us go to war and blow some shit up (metaphorically, one presumes, because otherwise we'd kind of be jihadists - no, we're just warriors)? Is it the imminent return of Lucifer, who would presumably peel the skin off Tony Perkins from his smarmy face to his tiny scrotum? Is it an attack by joined armies of Jews, Muslims, and Hindus? Nope. It's that guinea Jezebel, Nancy Pelosi, and her hordes of godless Democrats who would dare "pass a spate of popular measures" including stem cell research. That's right, warriors. We now have to get all theological on their asses in order to halt the Congress from passing legislation that the majority of Americans want. Perkins fumes, "The next two years may bring the most profoundly anti-faith, family and freedom initiatives in the history of Congress."

So we gotta get up our prayerifyin' mojos. We have been given our marchin' orders: "Pray that God will multiply His prayer army during the next two years. May He train men, women and young people to be disciplined, focused, faith-filled and equipped to challenge whatever may come." And the great thing about training prayer warriors is that as they stand up, we can stand...oh, wait. Now the trick there is hopin' that God's a-gonna get off his ass and multiply that prayer army. Fast, motherfucker, because 2008's just around the corner.

And we've gotta do some prayin' fer that, too: "Pray that God will intervene to give America a President who knows and fears Him, who will lead our nation in righteousness and call Americans to the kind of prayer and to repentance that will allow God to restore his favor to America. Pray that Americans will rally to such a candidate." See? We've lost God's favor. And without that favor we're wandering lambs, favorless, bereft of favor, God's favor. Like some kind of favor-denied nomads in a secular desert with progressive cactuses pricking our non-favored flesh whenever we want to drink sweet cactus juice to slake our unfavored thirsts.

Sometimes you just gotta sit back and enjoy the panic on the Christian right since November. They're flailing around now, their leaders descending into madness because of their suppressed libidos and weakening grip on power, their minions running away, their politicians disappearing into the dark limbo of the loser's graveyard, their cause now nothing more than what it always was: steps backward, steps backward, when the unstoppable urge is forward.