The heavy metal evangelist Bradlee Dean, whose opening prayer Friday at the Minnesota House of Representatives has sparked a firestorm, does not much like Islam, a religion he believes is at war with the United States.
Dean has long believed that President Obama is a Muslim, and he often insists that Obama has declared America a Muslim nation. So it wasn’t terribly surprising when he snuck a slur against the president into his prayer. The Minnesota House of Representatives, he acknowledged, is a nondenominational chamber, which he takes to mean that all kinds of Christians are welcome. “[I]t’s not about the Baptists and it’s not about the Catholics alone or the Lutherans or the Wesleyans, or the Presbyterians the evangelicals or any other denomination,” he said. The only head of the denomination—i.e., of the government —“is Jesus, as every president up until 2008 has acknowledged.”
Rep. Terry Morrow was so angry he shook. He responded:
“Mr. Speaker, I do trust and I do hope that every member of this chamber understands the gravity and the severity of the offense that had been given to many people within this chamber and out,” he said. “It has been my understanding that part of the justification, part of the explanation for starting our sessions with a prayer was that those prayers would never exclude, never marginalize a Minnesotan on the basis of their faith, on the basis of their beliefs, on the basis of who they are, and those expectations have been crushed today.”
