Mad at the politicians? If you can't vote them out of office, maybe you can get God to smite them. A Twin Cities minister has started the Angry Prayer Project, and -- boy! -- are there some angry prayers being directed at politicians. "When they hold up the taxpayers at gunpoint, please see to it that they only shoot themselves in the [posterior]," pleads one. This isn't what the Rev. Ian Punnett from St. David's Episcopal Church in Minnetonka had in mind when he started www.prayersoftruth.com.

The website, launched in March, is intended to help people process their anger through prayer. Punnett was thinking more of the anger that can accompany the unexpected death of a loved one or a diagnosis of a terminal illness, for instance.

But if people use it for political venting, he's OK with it.

"In fact, I've been sort of pushing the conversation the last couple of days," he said Friday. "It's refreshing."

He says that when it comes to anger, politics ranks among the leading causes.

"I only have a couple of rules," he said. "I won't tolerate true ugliness or vindictiveness. And you can't use the site to settle scores. But beyond that, I don't want to have control of this. The whole idea is to let it be an organic experience."

Punnett, who also hosts a pair of radio talk shows -- the nationally syndicated "Coast to Coast AM with Ian Punnett" on weekends and the local show "A Balanced Breakfast with Ian and Margery" on FM-107 on weekdays -- said that angry prayer has a long theological history.

"There is a group of psalms that biblical scholars call the 'deprecating' psalms, although some people call them 'lamenting' psalms," he said. "The anger in them is very deep."

The angry prayers that are sent to him are posted on www.prayersoftruth.com. (To read them, click on the links to both "some angry prayers" and "your angry prayers"). He expects to see a lot of politically related submissions over the weekend, but it's nothing to what he anticipates Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

"Regardless of who wins, there's going to be a lot of anger about the election," he predicted. "A lot of people are going to think that God disappointed them."

Jeff Strickler • 612-673-7392