Not only is an item by The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan linked below an example of religious persecution, turns out like much of what Sullivan writes these days - it's flat-out wrong.
One of the musical directors at the church, Adele Morgan, who has known Ms. Palin since the third grade, said the Palins moved to the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church in 2002, in part because its ministry is less “extreme” than Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God, which practice speaking in tongues and miraculous healings.
In one of America's less fine moments on July 15, 1960 Democratic Presidential nominee John Fitzgerald Kennedy was forced to make what by today's standards should be considered an embarrassing plea.
I am fully aware of the fact that the Democratic Party, by nominating someone of my faith, has taken on what many regard as a new and hazardous risk--new, at least since 1928. But I look at it this way: the Democratic Party has once again placed its confidence in the American people, and in their ability to render a free, fair judgment. And you have, at the same time, placed your confidence in me, and in my ability to render a free, fair judgment--to uphold the Constitution and my oath of office--and to reject any kind of religious pressure or obligation that might directly or indirectly interfere with my conduct of the Presidency in the national interest. My record of fourteen years supporting public education--supporting complete separation of church and state--and resisting pressure from any source on any issue should be clear by now to everyone.
I hope that no American, considering the really critical issues facing this country, will waste his franchise by voting either for me or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation. It is not relevant. I want to stress, what some other political or religious leader may have said on this subject. It is not relevant what abuses may have existed in other countries or in other times. It is not relevant what pressures, if any, might conceivably be brought to bear on me. I am telling you now what you are entitled to know: that my decisions on any public policy will be my own--as an American, a Democrat and a free man.
Yet forty-eight years and some odd days later under the banner of a publication, The Atlantic, once so esteemed as to be considered an American Institution sits an item with video and text that represents nothing short of the religious prosecution of current Republican Vice Presidential nominee Governor Sarah Palin.
Good God! I watched that video of Palin at her church through twice. The Assemblies of God are Pentecostals, of course, the real "holy rollers"--ecstatic experience of the Godhead in your own body, rolling in the aisles, talking in tongues. When I got some exposure to them, they were extremely conservative and strict (no dancing, no lipstick, no short skirts) but Palin is evidence of how they've mainstreamed themselves.
I wonder if the average reader would hear the references she makes and understand them? Master's commissions--this is a program they run to evangelize non-believers, in Alaska especially native Americans. Notice that our foreign and defense policy is simply God-given - not to be weighed, studied, deliberated, only to be implemented as we're taught by our betters. And notice that her political program - build a sports complex, a pipeline, change a tax bill, all likewise simply becomes a matter of religion.
For twenty years the most hardcore Christianists have been held in the background. Now one of them is the vice presidential nominee next to a man who's 72 and a repeated cancer survivor. This is mortifying. How could John McCain do this to our country!
That the increasingly demented Andrew Sullivan, not even an American citizen, so far as I can tell, would spit upon the legacy of a once beloved American President will come as no shock to anyone still paying him any attention. Frankly, there's no guessing what he might produce next as he continues to spiral down, seemingly infected with a vicious hate. He's already become more pustule, than man as it is. But his relative and increasing insignificance to American political debate as a whole makes his part almost ignorable.
But that a once important American publication founded in Boston in 1857 by the likes of Stowe, Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes and Lowell continues to host his objectively un-American postings really is too much. It should not be ignored. It can't be excused. And it might not ever warrant being forgiven if they opt to continue milking said pustule for whatever similarly deranged and ultimately pus-like bit of web traffic he might actually be worth.
