A Daily Kos diarist notes that Palin’s church is well outside of the mainstream:
In light of this New York Times article revealing the central role religion plays in Palin’s life, details about her church are becoming more relevant–and more disturbing. Palin’s church claims that it has been “prophesied” that Alaska is a “refuge state” (along with Wisconsin) for the rapture (Alaska First!). Watch Palin on stage as her pastor proclaims that Alaska will be a refuge for hundreds of thousands of people in “the last days.” Video here (around the 1:37 mark). Oh, and her church also embraces the “pray away the gay” movement.
I would caution liberals against making too much about Palin’s church’s relatively extremist beliefs, since our own presidential nominee was a member of a church whose former pastor – a black liberation theologian – was well outside of the mainstream of most mainline Protestant churches. Drawing attention to Palin’s church will only resurrect concerns about Obama’s church, and bring us into Jeremiah Wright 2: Electric Boogaloo. Which, you know, would only serve to alienate an entirely new group of white voters, while activating the racial anxieties of millions more. Not exactly a winning strategy, if you know what I mean.
cross-posted at my blog
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Why not? Taking the high road worked soooo well for Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.
This is why Democrats come off as wimps. And I hate to say it, but you sound like a concern troll. The right noise machine has already brought Pastor Wright up. The left needs to bring this Palin’s religion as a classic case of projection on the Republicans behalf.
Until we learn how to attack and fight dirty, we will continue to lose elections.
phinky,
As satisfying as it might be to attack Palin’s extreme religious beliefs, you risk two things by doing so:
A) Alienating a fair number of religious Americans, whose beliefs are in some sense “extreme.”
B) Reminding folks that we spent a good month obsessing over Barack Obama’s church. Like I said, the last thing we want is for “Goddamn America” to be playing 24/7 on the networks again.
Rev’d Wright’s congregation is a member of the UCC (United Church of Christ) – a historic cornerstone of the mainline Protestant denominations. While critics may consider some of his views to be non-mainstream (I don’t), his religious denomination certainly isn’t. Religious bloggers like PD at Street Prophets and Rev’d Chuck Currie covered this issue quite extensively. The pushback against Wright was not only an attack on Obama but an attack on the UCC as well — an attempt by the rightwing to marginalize and punish the UCC for its stance on reproductive justice and marriage equality. To equate Palin’s brand of Pentacostalism with the United Church of Christ only further plays in to conservative frames about “balance” to say nothing about their attacks on the religious left.
But the majority of Americans are not religious. And I am sick and tired of tip toeing around religious people (especially fundamentalist types, what are the Christianists going to do? Swear out a jeebus fatwa?) because I might offend them. If their faith is so weak that anyone who challenges it might offend maybe they should re-examine their beliefs.
This is America, blasphemy does not carry the death penalty here. And we need to point out that Sarah Palin is a crazy-ass, right-wing theocrat. (Yes, I did go ad-hominem on her)
And the Rev Wright has been brought up a gazillion times already. There is footage of Sarah Palin saying crazy stuff. None of Barack Obama.
We need to
a. Force Sarah Palin to quit her church like Obama was forced to quit his.
or
b. Get her or McCain to have a total meltdown in public.
Sarah,
I’m not equating Palin’s church and the UCC. I’m simply pointing out that for a majority of American’s, Rev. Wright’s beliefs are outside of the mainstream.
phinky,
First, a majority of Americans are religious. Pew’s recent survey on religious life (one of the largest of it’s kind) found that 83.1% of adults identify with a religious tradition. But my point isn’t about the religiosity of Americans, nor is it about Palin’s church in particular. My point is that making an issue out of Palin’s religious affiliation is bound to remind millions of (white) voters that “Hey, Obama has a radical Christian preacher!” Which doesn’t help. At all.
I gotta be honest dude: I’m not buying the “we have to be nicer to conservatives, or they might be mean to us” narrative.
That’s not the way wingnuts play the game. They play dirty and they play for keeps, no matter what liberals do. There’s no way you can rationally deal with these people, other than punch them in the mouth.
Though the majority of Americans do claim themselves to be Christians, most are not extreme-right fundamentalist Christians. Unfortunately, those right-wing fundamentalist Christians have far more political influence way out of proportion to their actual numbers so they end up being the supposed “voice” of “mainstream Christianity”. A problem not only due to Constitutional implications, but also undermines educational efforts necessary to maintain and increase US economic and scientific competitiveness relative to other nations in the world.
Considering how much the fundamentalist Christian right has attempted to undermine public education by foisting “intelligent design” as science in places like Dover, PA and the recent lawsuit by private Christian schools against the UC system for not accepting classes which teach “intelligent design” and in some cases…also failing to teach evolution theory as well……religious beliefs from politicians such as Palin’s need to be called out far more than they are.
As it is, the US is already the laughing stock of the world in K-12 science education because of nonsense such as this……and if it keeps up….we will be left in the dust as other nations still sometimes sneeringly labeled “Third World” by ignorant right-wing nuts like India and China are educating many scientists and engineers without having to worry about this level of anti-intellectual/anti-science self-sabotage.
I don’t think that’s the worry, that if we hit hard they’ll hit harder. I think the point is that this specific attack has the potential for them to bring Wright up with an air of legitimacy. That coupled with the fact that attacking her church most likely won’t go anywhere, it’s just not productive. At least, that’s what I assume the point to be.
As far as I know, liberation theology is at least touched upon by every major mainstream-to-liberal Protestant seminary.* So seminarians at least ought to recognize the name of Howard Thurman, founder of the black variant of the genre. I don’t know what Catholics do nowadays, but liberation theology is well known to most priests, even if it may not have been taught in seminary theology overviews, which for Catholic seminaries usually concentrate on Aquinas, without venturing into modern 20th and 21st century writers. Liberation theology is definitely out of favor with the Vatican, and prominent writers may be censored by the Vatican. (Catholic university religion departments do teach historical theology from ~100 AD to present. You don’t have to demonstrably agree with it to teach it – theology profs are good at presenting so that their personal opinion is not too clear).
*(Methodist, Presby, Lutheran ELCA, UCC of course, Episcopalian, all black-predominant denominations – essentially all the denominations that require formal seminary training – and non-denominational major academic seminaries such as Union, Yale, etc).
The issue of Palin’s religious opinions and affiliations becomes important in foreign policy discussions. Does she hold that the events of the Second Coming are in progress (ie, is the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948 a sign of approaching End-Times?), does she think that humankind has any business helping the process along, does she support the Israeli ownership of all Biblical-era territory (including the Dome of the Rock and the West Bank), what specifically is she willing to do to support the Israeli right wing and to damage the enemies of Israel?
Is war in Iraq God’s will (she said this) because it hurts an enemy of Israel’s territorial ambition? because American foreign policy is necessarily God’s will?
This is incredibly important to the prospects of the USA. We need reality-based foreign policy, not “they will greet us with roses” foreign policy.
i just gotta ask, wisconsin? i get the alaska thing, its way the eff north and pretty empty/isolated. but why wisconsin? is it the cheese curds?
Cons are going to do what’s in their best interest. They’re not going to take into consideration whether Liberals were nice to them. I guaran-damn-tee you that if McCain is behind in the polls by ten points a week out from the election, Republicans are going to put up ads showing Reverend Wright.
No one is saying that Obama has to question her church and her theocratic nonsense. That’s what the netroots and under-the-radar surrogates do. This country was founded on separation of church and state, and questioning Palin’s theocractic nuttiness is perfectly legitimate. Why do you think she wants to make it public policy that women who get raped aren’t entitled to abortions? Its her theology. She like ten million other theocrats in the the republican party – she wants to meld church and state.
Laying off her religion, in the misplaced fear that Cons might be mean to us is not impressive to me. I don’t think its impractical to point out the theocratic extremism in her religious views as they pertain to public policy.
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