He Enjoys Inflating Ideals of the Big Ten

“Those aren’t mattresses,” the reverend says. “They are the inflatable Ten Commandments.”

Ah. All I can say is they looked like two mattresses standing on end with the commandments inscribed on them, but then I was just going by a photograph of what is erected on the grounds of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park.

The 10-foot-high and 10-foot-wide “tablets,” Wiley Drake tells me, were created by the same company and with the same material used to make inflatable funhouses for kids.

The question is, why would someone want inflatable commandments?

“We’re honoring the Ten Commandments, and we’re doing it to draw some attention,” says Drake, who seems to have a God-given talent for doing just that.

In a world where the vast majority of preachers of all faiths go about their business in relative quiet, Drake is a firebrand. He has battled Buena Park over housing the homeless on church property and now is on a mission to make it clear to the confused in our midst exactly what this country is about.

“This is a Christian country,” Drake says. “This is a Jesus country. It is not a pluralistic country.”

He means that in the same way, I think, that we describe Iran as a Muslim nation or Israel as a Jewish nation. But for the Americans who pride themselves on living in a country that doesn’t make such distinctions, Drake says they’re missing the point.

When I suggest that his notion doesn’t reflect mainstream American thought, Drake begs to differ. “It butts heads not with the mainstream of people. It butts heads with those who have money and those who have power with the media. The majority of people don’t believe this is a pluralistic country, they believe it’s a Christian country. We allow religious freedom, but we’re a Christian nation.”

While many readers recoil at such remarks, others would high-five Drake if they could. I’ve talked to him various times over the years and found him neither scary nor inspiring. I guess I’m saying I consider him harmless.

He’s a throwback to the old country preacher (he’s 60) who isn’t afraid to speak his mind and likes public attention but who also has done the thankless work of, for example, providing shelter for the homeless. That effort violated city ordinances, but there was no disputing that he helped people in need.

Drake is a native Texan who came to his Buena Park church in 1987. Way back when, he wanted to be president of the Southern Baptist Convention but later reduced his sights.

That trail, I guess, has led to the inflatable commandments. The idea sprung from the controversy surrounding the refusal of Alabama’s chief justice in 2003 to remove a stone monument of the Commandments from the Capitol rotunda. The justice, expelled from office for refusing to obey a federal order, let an organization of “Christian veterans” take the monument, by flatbed truck, on tour.

That tour, Drake says, will culminate in mid-October on the Mall in Washington, D.C., where 2 million people “professing to be Americans for Christ, for Jesus,” will congregate.

I think it was Confucius who once said, “We’ll see.”

For now, I’m left to ask Drake if inflatable commandments might not be a bit garish, even for display on private property. “We want to be [garish],” he says, “because we’ve been pushed to the side and told we can’t do it [display Christian symbols on public property], so it may be in some respects that this is sort of overkill. But we’ve been overkilled in the other direction. We believe it’s time when we tell people that what drives this church, this pastor, this people is that we do indeed stand for the Ten Commandments being out in the open, in public. We’re literally willing to fight to the death to preserve the Ten Commandments.”

Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana. parsons@latimes.com.