Prayers are, of course, sometimes petitions. They may be calls to a supernatural being for healing, guidance, or even a bit of rain to drench a drought-ridden field. Some prayers of petition are meant to kill. In the Shellac song above, the singer Steve Albini calls on God to kill two people, a woman and a man. As listeners, we suspect that it may have something to do with infidelity, or perhaps a selfish emotional desire for revenge over a relationship that went sour. This sentiment isn’t relegated to the fictions within post-punk songs. An acquaintance who suffered abuse from an alcoholic father once told me that, as a child, he prayed for God to kill his dad. And in some religious narratives about prayer—specifically those found among certain kinds of evangelicals who practice spiritual warfare—God may respond by choosing to kill someone, regardless of whether the human who made the prayer wished such an outcome.

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