The Faith Of Sarah Palin

The next President and the next Vice President of the United States could be Buddhists, Episcopalians, animists, Zoroastrians, agnostics, or worship a certain shade of green as long as they use sound judgment and the law to define their policy prescriptions. My concern is that Sarah Palin does not do so.

When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin promised to lead the nation with a "servant's heart," evangelical Christians immediately recognized her as one of their own.

Whether before an audience of ministry students or on a national stage at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, the 44-year-old Palin speaks fluently about her faith, striking chords with phrases that evoke Christian virtue. Palin has called on people to pray for the cooperation necessary to build a natural gas pipeline across Alaska, labeled the U.S. mission in Iraq a "task that is from God" and argued that students should be taught the creation account from Genesis in public schools.

In a race where both presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, have tried to court religious voting blocs, Palin's introduction to the Republican ticket adds another dimension.

Just as McCain's politics are largely shaped by his experience as a prisoner of war and Obama's by his embrace of his racial identity, Palin's approach has been shaped by her relationship with God. Palin sees her government work as paling in comparison to a greater mission.

"I can do my job there in developing our natural resources and doing things like getting the roads paved and making sure our troopers have their cop cars and their uniforms and their guns, and making sure our public schools are funded," she said in June to ministry students at her former church. "But really, all of that stuff doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God."

I'm just never going to be OK with that. If your faith shapes your morality it's one thing. If you try to legislate your personal morality it's quite another. Palin has said that his goal as a public official is to follow God's will. She believes in a literal teaching of the Bible, and her current church seeks to convert gays away from homosexuality. They believe in spiritual warfare against the sinful. Her pastor has said that God is going to strike out His hand against America because of the fallen nature of Americans. This church is extremely radical and its teaching are not in step with a judicious handling of democratic institutions.

Many of Palin's beliefs mirror those of evangelical Christians. But Pentecostals occupy a distinct subset of evangelical Christianity. They believe they can be "baptized in the Holy Spirit" just as Jesus Christ's apostles were in the New Testament's Book of Acts. Gifts of the spirit include speaking in tongues, prophesy and faith healing.

The churches she has attended also embrace dispensation, a theological system that emphasizes man's dominion over the earth and the end times—theology that could potentially shape a believer's environmental and foreign policies.

We have endured eight years of this kind of end-times, Dominionist belief inside the White House. There's a difference between the faithful, the spiritual and what we are seeing out of the Wasilla Assembly of God. In the end, this comes back to McCain, who so needed the religious right to ramp up their phone banks and volunteer efforts that he sold his VP pick to the Christianists.

...and if you don't think this plays a role in public policy, take a look at this:

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt has proposed a new rule that will limit the rights of women to receive medically accurate information and treatment. The alleged goal of the rule is to protect the rights of health care workers, volunteers, and trainees. The result would be limited access to birth control and abortion for women all over the country - regardless of state law.

From CNN:

The rule, which applies to institutions receiving government money, would require as many as 584,000 employers ranging from major hospitals to doctors' offices and nursing homes to certify in writing that they are complying with several federal laws that protect the conscience rights of health care workers. Violations could lead to a loss of government funding and legal action to recoup federal money already paid.

The comment period ends on September 25th. We have 19 days until this rule takes effect.

Read the entire thing.