Revelations about Palin

When I wrote this post on Sarah Palin, there was a lot of snap negativity towards her. I thought it was unfounded.

Whoops. She is a crazy person and a terrible choice for a vice president.

You've all seen her interview with Katie Couric, right? Where she sputters about topics she's not familiar with (foreign policy, economics)? I'm not even going to link to it, just Google "palin and couric."

As to the crazy part, well, she's crazy about God. Sorry, fundamentalist readers, but I don't want a fundamentalist evangelical Christian as VP. I really don't. I'll get into why a little later, in case it's not obvious.

Salon.com has an article which first alerted me to Palin's God problem. Here are some quotes:

• Another valley activist, Philip Munger, says that Palin also helped push the evangelical drive to take over the Mat-Su Borough school board. "She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the board," said Munger, a music composer and teacher. "I bumped into her once after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God. I said, 'Sarah, how can you believe in creationism -- your father's a science teacher.' And she said, 'We don't have to agree on everything.'
• "I pushed her on the earth's creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she'd seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them."
• Munger also asked Palin if she truly believed in the End of Days, the doomsday scenario when the Messiah will return. "She looked in my eyes and said, 'Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime.'"

I've researched the creationist view before, and I've seen those pictures of "footprints." See here for a refutation: http://www.badarchaeology.net/data/ooparts/paluxy.php

Now look, if you think that Palin's free to believe whatever she wants, she is. But she has a habit of mixing politics and religion. And this is what is really scary: the people who say they believe they will see Jesus in this lifetime are actively working to make that happen. These are the people who like the conflict in the Middle East, because it means that Jerusalem is in turmoil, which of course means Jesus will come back. Would Palin start us towards apocalypse, just so she can go up in Rapture? I would say yes. Wouldn't you, if you believed you could jumpstart the salvation of mankind, try your hardest to do so?

For examples of how Palin mixes God with policies, here's a quote from the Huffington Post:

Alaska's governor asked the audience to pray for another matter -- a $30 billion national gas pipeline project that she wanted built in the state. "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said.

You remember how Palin thought that the Iraq war was a task from God (also quoted in the article). Apparently God's got a plan for everything. This is what these kinds of people believe. God has a plan for America. We've got to implement our faith in making laws. We've got to save the country's souls.

But wait, there's more. Palin's church invited and honored a certified witchhunter!

This is interesting. When I heard about her spiritual adviser holding witchhunts, I thought, that's impossible. No one in this country could stand for that, right?

I was half-right. Pastor Muthee is based in Africa, and that's where he found his witch and cast her out of town. But Palin's church invited him to speak about it! And Palin let him pray over her! And Palin considers him a great spiritual person in her life!

Some background info for you: African natives believe in witches. It's not a Christian idea. It comes from indigenous religious attitudes. They believe that anybody with negative emotions can be a witch. Witches are often unaware of their power. It's like, if I'm jealous of my brother, and then he trips over a root, I'm responsible for that, because the witch in me lashed out at him. (I've studied one such case in my Anthropology class.)

I had not heard of this concept being incorporated into evangelical churches in Africa. That's interesting. And scary. Like Sarah Palin.

America, be afraid. Because Palin is going to try to bring a little Revelation into the government.

Think I'm paranoid? I challenge you to ask Sarah Palin this question: "If you could do anything to bring Jesus back for the second coming, would you?" She will be unable to say no.