Sarah Palin’s Interview on Faith (CBN)

Vice Presidential Candidate describes her personal faith in this series of two videos.  She seems fairly mainstream in this interview by the Christian Broadcasting Network for the 700 Club.

She also answers questions regarding the federal marriage amendment and her opinions.

VIDEO: Palin linked political success to prayer of Kenyan witch hunter

This campaign season has no shortage of the weird. Here are some excerpts from perhaps the strangest story yet told. http://timesonline.typepad.com/uselections/2008/09/palin-linked-el.html

At a speech at the Wasilla Assembly of God on June 8 this year, Mrs Palin described how Thomas Muthee had laid his hands on her when he visited the church as a guest preacher in late 2005, prior to her successful gubernatorial bid.

 

“And I’m thinking, this guy’s really bold, he doesn’t even know what I’m going to do, he doesn’t know what my plans are. And he’s praying not “oh Lord if it be your will may she become governor,” no, he just prayed for it. He said “Lord make a way and let her do this next step. And that’s exactly what happened.”

She then adds: “So, again, very very powerful, coming from this church,” before the presiding pastor comments on the “prophetic power” of the event.

Here is Pastor Muthee’s story:

The full Transformations video featuring Pastor Muthee’s story has recently been removed from YouTube but the rest of the story is detailed in a 1999 article in the Christian Science Monitor, as well as on numerous evangelical websites.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, six months of fervent prayer and research identified the source of the witchcraft as a local woman called Mama Jane, who ran a “divination” centre called the Emmanuel Clinic.

Her alleged involvement in fortune-telling and the fact that she lived near the site of a number of fatal car accidents led Pastor Muthee to publicly declare her a witch responsible for the town’s ills, and order her to offer her up her soul for salvation or leave Kiambu.

Says the Monitor, “Muthee held a crusade that “brought about 200 people to Christ”.” They set up round-the-clock prayer intercession in the basement of a grocery store and eventually, says the pastor “the demonic influence – the ‘principality’ over Kiambu –was broken”, and Mama Jane fled the town.

Muthee took “spiritual warfare” to new heights in a way that would not seem to recognize the need to tolerate religions different than his own.

 

According to accounts of the witchhunt circulated on evangelical websites such as Prayer Links Ministries, after Pastor Muthee declared Mama Jane a witch, the townspeople became suspicious and began to turn on her, demanding that she be stoned. Public outrage eventually led the police to raid her home, where they fired gunshots, killing a pet python which they believed to be a demon.

After Mama Jane was questioned by police – and released – she decided it was time to leave town, the account says.

Pastor Muthee has frequently referred to this witchhunt in his sermons as an example of the power of “spiritual warfare”. In October 2005, he delivered ten sermons at the Wasilla Assembly of God, the audio of which was available on the church’s website until it was removed around the time Mrs Palin’s candidacy was announced. The blog Irregular Times has listings and screen grabs of the sermons. 

Witch hunts are still happening in some parts of the world with drastic results.  Here are a couple of recent stories:

 

STUDENTS FROM the University of Limpopo, South Africa, staying at cottage of Mankweng unit 1, has claimed that around 03:30am on Sunday morning, a gogo (great-grandmother) victimised them by sneaking inside their rooms. The gogo, who said that she is from Thema family and married to Selepe family, jumped the fence of the cottage where students reside. It is amazing how the gogo managed to reach the place where students reside. This 65-70 years old gogo said that she is from Mongwaneng at Mentz and she travelled from there to Mankweng after Zion Christian Church (ZCC) young men chased her.

Gwangwa Annatacia, a student who is doing a final year degree in education said that their gates were locked, and they do not know how she could have managed to get in. “We believe that she was flying because we did not find her footprints,” Annatacia said. The gogo sneaked inside the student’s room who were fast asleep. A student who believes he is a victim did not want to comment, but he was very stressed.

Abram Matsena from Bearco armed security said that they believe the old gogo is a witch. “I received a call early in the morning and I ran to this place. I arrived before the Mankweng police arrived and I tried to help the students remove the gogo from their room, but she refused. She said that the room belongs to one of her daughters named Ngwanatheko.   http://world.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=139634

 

 

What is even more frightening than the story are some of the comments from readers:

The Politics of Obama’s Faith and the Evangelical Left – Stephen Manfield

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Thomas Nelson Publishers has published a new book objectively presenting Barack’s faith. This video introduces the book. Many voters question Obama’s authenticity and beliefs, both religious and political, and how the two intertwine. According to Stephen Mansfield, the author of this book, Barack is “raising the banner of what he hopes will be the faith-based politics of a new generation . . . and he will carry that banner to whatever heights of power his God and the American people allow.”

A portion of the proceeds of the sales of this book from the above link will go to support ReligiousLiberty.TV.

Wasilla Assembly of God – Statement on Sarah Palin

Statement of Wasilla Assembly of God Church on Sarah Palin

 

August 30th, 2008

Governor Sarah Palin did attend Wasilla Assembly of God since the time she was a teen ager. She and her family were a part of the church up until 2002. Since that time she has maintained a friendship with Wasilla Assembly of God and has attended various conferences and special meetings here. This June, the Governor spoke at the graduation service of our School of Ministry, Master’s Commission Wasilla Alaska.

We have had some inquires into Governor Palin’s beliefs. We do know that Gov Palin is a woman of integrity. She is a servant of the people, she is a strong leader. As for her personal beliefs, Governor Palin is well able to speak for herself on those issues.

As Alaskans we are excited about our Governor being selected as the nominee for Vice President. As residents of Wasilla, we are ecstatic about one of our own being thrust to the national forefront. However, as a church, it is not appropriate for us to endorse any one candidate over another. As believers, we are reminded in 1 Peter 2.13 that we are to submit to those in authority. 1 Timothy 2.1-2 tells us pray for those in authority. This we will do no matter who is elected. We wish the best to Governor Palin, and Senator McCain, as well as to Senator Obama and Senator Biden.

May God continue to bless America.

Click here to view the video…

 

———-

Bio of Pastor Ed Kalnins (from the church’s web site)

Pastor Ed Kalnins came to Alaska from New Jersey in July 1999 to be the Senior Pastor at Wasilla Assembly of God. As a young man at Arizona State University he received Jesus through the ministry of Phoenix First Assembly of God. When Phoenix First launched the world’s first Master Commission, Pastor Ed and his soon to be bride Robin were among the first students, and were discipled by the great soul winner, Tommy Barnett. In the twenty years since then, Pastor Ed and Robin have served in Florida, Wisconsin and New Jersey as youth pastors, church planters, associate pastors and interim senior pastors. They have seven beautiful children, Devin, Gayla, Gerrit, Wade, Leah, their Alaskan Easter Weekend baby, Anya, and the newest addition: Brent..

Chrisopher Hitchens: Don’t Patronize Palin (Salon.com)

In today’s column, outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens describes the religious situation of this year’s crop of candidates.  Here is an excerpt of the full article which is available at http://www.slate.com/id/2199568/

Interviewed by Rick Warren at the grotesque Saddleback megachurch a short while ago, Sen. Barack Obama announced that Jesus had died on the cross to redeem him personally. How he knew this he did not say. But it will make it exceedingly difficult for him, or his outriders and apologists, to ridicule Palin for her own ludicrous biblical literalist beliefs. She has inarticulately said that her gubernatorial work would be hampered “if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with god.” Her local shout-and-holler tabernacle apparently believes that Jews can be converted to Jesus and homosexuals can be “cured.” I cannot wait to see Obama and Biden explain how this isn’t the case or how it’s much worse than, and quite different from, Obama’s own raving and ranting pastor in Chicago or Biden’s lifelong allegiance to the most anti-”choice” church on the planet. The difference, if there is one, is that Palin is probably sincere whereas the Democratic team is almost certainly hypocritical. The same is true of the boring contest over who can be the most populist, and of the positively sinister race to see who can be the most demagogically anti-Washington. With this kind of immaturity right across both tickets, it’s insulting to be asked to decide on the basis of experience, let alone “readiness.”

Read the full column at http://www.slate.com/id/2199568/

VIDEOS: Obama’s, McCain’s and Palin’s Pastor Problems

This year, the candidates’ religious leaders and their own beliefs are getting a lot of attention. Here is a round-up of some of the videos that have made news in recent months.

Jeremiah Wright has been a political liability for Barack Obama:

Wright spoke at the National Press Club about his remarks and views:

Sarah Palin’s pastor, Larry Kroon, on his belief that God will punish America. GOP Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin’s pastor says that God will Punish America, compares the United States to Assyria and a corrupt African nation.

Sarah Palin speaks at her childhood church:

Pastors John Hagee and Rod Parsley’s endorsements of McCain have created a bit of concern for the candidate:

McCain ultimately rejected Hagee’s endorsement:

But if it is any consolation to the candidates, they don’t need to worry about distancing themselves from the infamous Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church – he doesn’t like either side!

Evangelical Christians and Sarah Palin – Excerpt from Peggy Noonan’s Column (WSJ)

Peggy Noonan has some interesting thoughts on McCain’s choice of running mate.  It is certainly jumbling up categories – some liberals are making arguments that Palin should stay home with the kids while conservatives are making feminist arguments that if Palin was male, the media wouldn’t be asking these questions.  It has interesting implications in the culture war.

Here are some excerpts from Peggy Noonan’s September 3, 2008 column in the Wall Street Journal - http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

 

Let me say of myself and almost everyone I know in the press, all the chattering classes and political strategists and inside dopesters of the Amtrak Acela Line: We live in a bubble and have around us bubble people. We are Bubbleheads. We know this and try to compensate for it by taking road trips through the continent — we’re on one now, in Minneapolis — where we talk to normal people. But we soon forget the pithy, knowing thing the garage mechanic said in the diner, and anyway we weren’t there long enough in the continent to KNOW, to absorb. We view through a prism of hyper-sophistication, and judge by the rules of Chevy Chase and Greenwich, of Cleveland Park and McLean, of Bronxville and Manhattan.

And again we know this, we know this is our limit, our lack.

But we also forget it.

And when you forget you’re a Bubblehead you get in trouble, you misjudge things. For one thing, you assume evangelical Christians will be appalled and left agitated by the circumstances of Mrs. Palin’s daughter. But modern American evangelicals are among the last people who’d judge her harshly. It is the left that is about to go crazy with Puritan judgments; it is the right that is about to show what mellow looks like. Religious conservatives know something’s wrong with us, that man’s a mess. They are not left dazed by the latest applications of this fact. “This just in – there’s a lot of sinning going on out there” is not a headline they’d understand to be news.

So the media’s going to wait for the Christian right to rise up and condemn Mrs. Palin, and they’re not going to do it because it’s not their way, and in any case her problems are their problems. Christians lived through the second half of the 20th century, and the first years of the 21st. They weren’t immune from the culture, they just eventually broke from it, or came to hold themselves in some ways apart from it. I think the media will explain the lack of condemnation as “Republican loyalty” and “talking points.” But that’s not what it will be.

Another Bubblehead blind spot. I’m bumping into a lot of critics who do not buy the legitimacy of small town mayorship (Palin had two terms in Wasilla, Alaska, population 9,000 or so) and executive as opposed to legislative experience. But executives, even of small towns, run something. There are 262 cities in this country with a population of 100,000 or more. But there are close to a hundred thousand small towns with ten thousand people or less. “You do the math,” the conservative pollster Kellyanne Conway told me. “We are a nation of Wasillas, not Chicagos.”

Read the rest at  http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

VEEPSTAKES WINNER: It worked – Dobson says he would “pull lever” for McCain-Palin

In the last couple of days, I have wondered what it would take for John McCain to get the evangelical vote, particularly when Dr. James Dobson had previously said that he could not vote for him.  Well, apparently the selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin worked some magic for the good doctor and he said “But I can tell you that if I had to go into the studio, I mean the voting booth today, I would pull that lever.”  

With the blessing of America’s self-appointed Christian leader, millions of evangelicals can now go and cast their vote for McCain-Palin without having to go to the protestant version of confession afterwards.

Here is an excerpt of the interview.  The interesting thing is that both Dobson and host Dennis Prager know that what Dobson says is the equivalent of a Papal Bull (but without the Papal part). 

Dobson: Well, you know I did a radio program about a month ago with Dr. Albert Mohler, and we talked about what was at stake in this election and our concerns about the policies that Barack Obama would implement. The more I hear the more I learn, the more concerned I am, and so on that program Dr. Mohler and I talked about the fact that John McCain is not the perfect candidate. He’s certainly would not be my choice and, for over a year, I did not feel that I could vote for him. But I said in that radio program that “I can’t say it now”—which was then, because I didn’t know who his vice presidential choice would be, and he if would come up with Lieberman or Tom Ridge or somebody like that, we’d be back in a hole again. But I said for the first time “I might, I might.” And some people call that a flip-flop. If they do, so be it. Campaigns are long. You get information. You find out what the choices are. So I’ve been moving in John McCain’s direction. I don’t know if anybody cares, but for me…

Prager: Plenty, plenty of people care and that’s why I am having you on. I care, many people care and you have a lot of followers. You have earned the right to that respect.

Read more at 

http://townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2008/08/29/dobson_“i_would_pull_that_lever”_for_mccain-palin

VEEPSTAKES: Will Alaska Governor Sarah Palin bring in Conservative Votes for McCain?

 

With Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty apparently out of the running for McCain’s VP pick, speculation this morning turns to Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska.  Scratch that . . . News Just In – Sarah Palin IS McCain’s running mate.

Richard Land was interviewed by CBS News and the following exchange took place:

 

CBSNews.com: Who’s on the list of people mentioned for VP that you think would most excite Southern Baptists and other members of the conservative faith community?

Richard Land: Probably Governor Palin of Alaska, because she’s a person of strong faith. She just had her fifth child, a Downs Syndrome child. And there’s a wonderful quote that she gave about her baby, and the fact that she would never, ever consider having an abortion just because her child had Downs Syndrome. 

She’s strongly pro-life. She’s a virtual lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. She would ring so many bells. And I just think it would help with independents because she’s a woman. She’s a reform Governor. I think that, from what I hear, that would be the choice that would probably ring the most bells, along with Mike Huckabee, of course, who’s a Southern Baptist, along with Mike Huckabee, of course, who’s a Southern Baptist.

From: http://palinforvp.blogspot.com/2008/08/leading-evangelical-says-palin-rings.html

As she is relatively new to the political world, only recently elected Governor of Alaska, there is not a lot of information about her policies aside from her own personal beliefs.  Here is what Wikipedia users say about her background.

Family and personal background

Palin was born as Sarah Louise Heath in Sandpoint, Idaho, the daughter of Charles and Sally (Sheeran) Heath.^[3] Her family moved to Alaska when she was an infant.^[4] Charles Heath was a popular science teacher and coached track.^[4] The Heaths were avid outdoors enthusiasts; Sarah and her father would sometimes wake at 3 a.m. to hunt moose before school, and the family would regularly run 5k and 10k races.^[4]

Palin was the point guard and captain for the Wasilla High School Warriors, in Wasilla, Alaska, when they won the Alaska small-school basketball championship in 1982; she earned the nickname “Sarah Barracuda” because of her intense play.^[4] She played the championship game despite a stress fracture in her ankle, hitting a critical free throw in the last seconds.^[4] Palin, who was also the head of the school Fellowship of Christian Athletes, would lead the team in prayer before games.^[4]

In 1984, Palin was second-place in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant after winning the Miss Wasilla contest earlier that year, winning a scholarship to help pay her way through college.^[4][5] In the Wasilla pageant, she played the flute and also won Miss Congeniality.

Details of Palin’s personal life have contributed to her political image. She hunts, eats moose burgers, ice fishes, rides snowmobiles, and owns a float plane.^[6][7] Palin holds a lifetime membership with the National Rifle Association. She admits that she used marijuana when it was legal in Alaska, but says that she did not like it.^[8]

Palin holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Idaho where she also minored in politics. She briefly worked as a sports reporter for local Anchorage television stations while also working as a commercial fisherman with her husband, Todd, her high school sweetheart.^[4] One summer when she was working on Todd’s fishing boat, the boat collided with a tender while she was holding onto the railing; Palin broke several fingers.^[4] Outside the fishing season, Todd works for BP at an oil field on the North Slope^[9] and is a champion snowmobiler, winning the 2000-mile “Iron Dog” race four times.^[4] The two eloped shortly after Palin graduated college; when they learned they needed witnesses for the civil ceremony, they recruited two residents from the old-age home down the street.^[4] Todd is a Native Yup’ik Eskimo.^[4] The Palin family lives in Wasilla, about 40 miles (64 km) north of Anchorage.^[10]

On September 11, 2007, the Palins’ son Track joined the Army. Eighteen years old at the time, he is the eldest of Palin’s five children.^[10] Track now serves in an infantry brigade and will be deployed to Iraq in September. She also has three daughters: Bristol, 17, Willow, 13, and Piper, 7.^[11] On April 18, 2008, Palin gave birth to her second son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, who has Down syndrome.^[12] She returned to the office three days after giving birth.^[13] Palin refused to let the results of prenatal genetic testing change her decision to have the baby. “I’m looking at him right now, and I see perfection,” Palin said. “Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?”^[13]

 

High approval ratings

In July 2007, Palin had an approval rating often in the 90s.^[6] A poll published by Hays Research on July 28, 2008 showed Palin’s approval rating at 80%. ^[54]