Sarah Palin & Religion

Anyone with sincere religious beliefs--especially if those beliefs are lifelong- is going to be influenced by them in a thousand ways. They are like lenses through which you see the world around you. They influence the way you come to understand what is good and what is bad, what is life-giving and what is death-dealing. That's surely true of my life, and I think it's true of millions of lives. Including the life of Sarah Palin.

So I'm intensely worried. What is simply personal can be kept under wraps. What might affects the lives of millions or even billions of people cannot be kept under wraps. Especially when we are talking about someone who could be a heartbeat away from becoming the most powerful person in the world.

Ms. Palin apparently belonged to a Pentecostal church from the age of 12 until the age of 38. Then, in 2002, she switched to the non-denominational Wasilla Bible Church, where some very strange things go on. For example, last August 17, a guest speaker at the church, David Brickner, who founded "Jews for Jesus," said that terrorist attacks on Israel are due to God's "judgment" of Jews who don't convert to Christianity. Brickner did come from outside as a guest, but this is surely a case where Palin has to come out of her campaign-imposed isolation and answer questions about how she views stuff like this coming out of her own church.

And what did she mean when she called the Iraq war "a task from God?" Does she consider it a Holy War? How would her belief in creationism affect her approach to the nation's public schools? What was she thinking when she stood at the side of her pastor Ed Kalnins while he talked about Alaska's destiny to be a shelter for Christians at the end of the world. (Here's how Kalnins put it: "I believe that Alaska is one of the 'refuge states'... in the Last Days. And hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to this state to seek refuge. And the church has to be ready to minister to them." Does Palin actually buy into this wild stuff?

When I hear "Pentecostal," I think of "speaking in tongues" and being "slain in the spirit" (falling to the floor during services.) But Palin's churches take part in something way beyond traditional Pentecostalism. It is called The Third Wave, or The New Apostolic Reformation. For an article on this astounding movement, paste this URL into your browser:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/97939?page=entire
Then brace yourself and read away.