Features » October 27, 2008
On a Mission From God (cont’d)
Does Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin merely ask God for guidance, or does she believe she is carrying out divine will?
'The vote-for-this-because-God-says-so approach means that those who oppose a particular policy are violating God's will. It turns policy issues into religious conflicts.'
The pastors
In June, Palin returned to Wasilla Assembly of God, which has supported campaigns by the Alaska Family Council on such issues as opposing same-sex marriage, to give a now widely circulated speech. In it, she asked those attending to pray “that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. troops] out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”
Palin also spoke about efforts to build a $30 billion gas pipeline, saying, “God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built. So pray for that.” None of this would matter, she added, “If the people of Alaska’s heart is not good with God.”
Steven Waldman, editor of Beliefnet, a mainstream religious online magazine, found her comments on the war justifiable, writing that to “pray that the war is part of God’s plan … is a totally appropriate desire for a Christian — and for a Christian politician.” However, Waldman found her pipeline comments far more disturbing.
“Asserting that God endorses a particular energy strategy or public works project is exactly the sort of mindset the Founders feared,” he wrote in a Sept. 7 column on Beliefnet. “The vote-for-this-because-God-says-so approach means that those who oppose a particular policy are violating God’s will — and good Christians should view them that way. It turns policy issues into religious conflicts. Such a politician may be impervious to reason, evidence or compromise.”
Waldman continues: “If God has blessed an idea — and told you so personally — what possible argument could dissuade you?”
In 2002 Palin switched her membership to the Wasilla Bible Church, the nondenominational evangelical church where David Brickner, founder of Jews for Jesus, gave a notorious speech in August. With Palin in attendance, Brickner asserted that Palestinian attacks on Israelis were God’s “judgment” of Jews for their refusal to embrace Jesus Christ. This same church promoted a Sept. 13 Focus on the Family event called “Love Won Out,” a workshop on how to cure homosexuality through prayer.
During the year before she became governor, Palin “frequently” attended a Wasilla megachurch called the Church on the Rock, according to its pastor, David Pepper. Reporters at Harper’s magazine listened to some of Pepper’s recent sermons and discovered that he has quite a jaundiced view of America as a nation consumed by “horrific rebellion and sin” and that he told his congregants that, “The purpose for the United States … is to glorify God. This nation is a Christian nation,” a view he has reaffirmed in subsequent interviews.
Once Palin was elected governor in 2006, she joined the Juneau Christian Center, a third Pentecostal church, where she worships while in the state capitol. According to recorded sermons reviewed by Harper’s, the pastor there, Mike Rose, has preached that, “We are living in the Last Days. These are incredible times to live in.” Just last spring he preached against evolution, saying, “the word of God says … that you are not a descendant of a chimpanzee.”
Next March, Juneau Christian Center is scheduled to host a prayer evening organized by Christians United for Israel, headed by Pastor John Hagee — the religious leader whose endorsement McCain enthusiastically embraced and then was forced to reject after a sermon surfaced in which Hagee described Adolf Hitler as a tool God used to force Jews back to Israel. Hagee has indicated that violent confrontations in the Middle East are part of apocalyptic prophesies in the Bible, an “exciting” development that signals Jesus may soon return to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. He has also used Biblical prophecy to advocate for a strike against Iran.
What would McCain owe evangelicals?
Should the Republicans win control of the presidency, the political policy payoff to the Christian Right could be substantial. The New York Times may have declared a year and a half ago that “the religious right’s era is over,” but Palin’s nomination is a sharp reminder of the folly of that view.
Since at least as far back as President Reagan, evangelicals have been the party’s institutionalized grassroots, its believers, its get-out-the-vote foot soldiers. This bloc is as important to the Republicans as organized labor and African Americans are, combined, to the Democratic Party.
While white evangelicals constitute only a quarter of the national population, this highly motivated voting bloc made up 40 percent of Bush’s electorate in 2000 — and he won millions more of their votes in 2004. When that number is combined with the most religiously observant Catholics, the total adds up to the majority of votes Bush received in each election. It’s a bloc so decisive in 2008 that McCain’s pick of Palin, or someone with her evangelical street cred, was actually a foregone conclusion.
In return for their loyalty, Bush turned over whole swaths of this country’s domestic and international policy to conservative evangelicals, from abortion and sex education to gay rights, social services, court appointments and medical research. He even used his global AIDS initiative, his foreign aid policy and his war on terror to court the Religious Right. How much more would McCain, disastrously down in the polls and in donor dollars before Palin joined his ticket, owe this constituency if elected?
We still do not know how Palin’s religious beliefs would inform her approach to the vice presidency — or the presidency.
Does Palin support the most theocratic statements of pastors and visitors in the churches she’s attended?
How will her lifetime of worship under the guidance of these pastors affect her approach to foreign policy, gay rights, reproductive rights, separation of church and state, science and public health?
We only have a few weeks for these questions to be put to Palin by reporters. And it’s her responsibility to answer them.
[Editor’s note: This article represents Berlet’s and Kaplan’s personal views.]
More information about Chip Berlet and Esther Kaplan
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