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Gail Sheehy

Deirdre English

Palin's Pastor Problem

In the second video, shot just three months before she accepted the vice presidential nomination, Palin returns to the Assembly of God to relive that moment for a group of young missionaries. The remarkable thing about Muthee’s anointing, she said, was that he had no idea she planned to announce a long-shot, ultimately successful run for governor two days later.

For Palin and her audience that day, her remarkable political rise realizes a prophesy that she would reach the level at which the power to decisively enact god’s will becomes hers. Palin suggests that Alaska will lead the nation in a Christian revival: “We are the head, not the tail,” she proclaimed: “things are percolatin’, things are comin’ along.”

In the June 8, 2008 video, Ed Kalnins, the pastor of Wasilla AG church, who preaches often about an impending Apocalypse, explains to the congregation that "God wants it [Alaska] to be a refuge for the lower 48 in the Last Days. Millions of people will come to the state to seek refuge and the church has to be ready to minister to them.”

Pentecostals believe that God acts directly through them, Pastor Paul Manwaring of the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry explained to us when we met him at the Crossroads Pentecostal church just outside Wasilla. All around us people were praying and speaking in tongues, a gift from God that they believe grants powers to heal the sick, prophesize the future, and even reform “whole cities and nations, by putting them on the path to Christian salvation, ” Manwaring said. Palin is now the symbol of that effort. Blumenthal’s film also quotes several Christians in Wasilla comparing her to Esther, the Biblical beauty who became a queen and saved the Jews from annihilation.

Deep in a valley and far from the coast, Wasilla started as a railroad stop for miners and graduated in the Sixties to a truck stop between Anchorage and Fairbanks. Palin’s childhood home is a rude plywood two-story with a pair of metal stovepipes. “We’d watch Monday night football zipped up to our chins in sleeping bags, and no one wanted to get up and put wood in the stove,” recalls Steve Menard, Sarah’s childhood friend who is now running for mayor of Wasilla.

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October 10, 2008 | 5:12pm
Comments ()
LeRoseyGirl

Perhaps Gov. Palin's "gifting" is to obtain political power, for the purpose of saving our souls? After all wasn't it President Bush who stated that he was "driven with a mission from God" to fight the terrorist in
Afghanistan and end the tyranny in Iraq?
Fighting terrorism has been the justification for two disastrous wars, starting with Afghanistan and continuing with Iraq. U.S. heavyhandedness over the past seven years has created more terrorists than it has killed or captured in Afghansitan or Iraq. The politics of fear and religious fanaticism unfortunately has become a cancer for which there does not appear to be a cure. Unless Rev. Muthee has an "anoitment" for that as well?





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1:05 pm, Oct 11, 2008
Shockacon

SING

What's wacky about Wasilla?
Those snow machines and trucks!
What's weird about Wasillans?
The cheap trick they put over on us!
What's worrisome out of Wasilla?
Muthee's prayers about pythons and witches!
Won't somebody go to Wasilla
And school those sonofab*tches!?!

CHANT

We reject wind-up dolls we want leaders who think,
We abhor wrinkled noses, fake smiles, and wink-wink.
Wacky, weird, worrisome Wasilla,
Not your average brand of vanilla.



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8:27 pm, Oct 11, 2008
southernyankee

Why don't more people in AK speak out especially on this issue. She scares the hell out of me and many of my friends. What is sad is that they are hoping and praying that McCain wins and soon after he is elected they will be praying for his death and that nut case will be our president. Hell no. If people don't start standing up for all of our rights than we are in bad shape. She must be outed and sent back to AK. Hopefully those people will have enough sense to impeach her.

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10:06 pm, Oct 11, 2008
southernyankee

You I wonder if this administration and the extreme right religious nut jobs are not sent by god but maybe in sheeps clothing and are actually the devil battilion.

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10:08 pm, Oct 11, 2008
ggralph

I can not imagine how stupid we American are. It's true that all politicians are crooked but Sarah Palin has reached a new level. I strongly believe that she abused her power but somehow, some americans manages to overlook at that because she is a fairly attractive white lady. Perhaps, her rise in the political arena is a sign of Biblical fulfilment as it mentioned in the bible the first shal become last which is the direction in which America is heading especially if Palin and Mckain were to become Vice President President

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8:41 am, Oct 12, 2008
MARJMC

Does anyone think that the cancellation of the popular television show "Men in Trees" (which clearly made fun of Alaskan life with questionable moral and even illegal 'entertainment'during the blackout winter) was in anyway connected to Palin's V.P. candidacy?

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3:08 pm, Oct 12, 2008
southernyankee

ggralph, you are so right. I would like to know where in the heck do these republicans think they have a right to jesus only? My jesus would be applauded by what the republican party is doing. After all what happened to help the lest of our people. Jesus didn't mean rich people only. Shame on the republican party for hijacking jesus.

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4:39 pm, Oct 12, 2008
southernyankee

I don't know. I have never see the show. I do have a neice that lives in AK in a remote area and she doesn't like Palin. My niece is a outdoor kid of a person and hunts deer, bear, fish, she said that the bears would come thru their yard some times. She sent me pictures of them fishing and there were a group of bear fishing also. Wow she can have that part of the country. I was in the state of Montana and that was enough wild country for me. Besides being to cold and to much snow. No thanks give me the warm states.

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10:40 pm, Oct 12, 2008
cmetian

How has it become comparable to "Hate speech" (See also Rev Wright), to merely have a belief that a power greater than yourself helps guide you? In this political climate it seems that just having beliefs different than someone else makes one a target for (wait for the irony) people saying you are ushering in a climate of religious intolerance! If no one who believes as I do is allowed a voice anymore, how long will it be until I am the object of the scorn and violence you pretend to be in fear of?

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2:55 am, Oct 13, 2008
southernyankee

Well Cmetian, as a catholic living in the bible belt in a small town in TN I can honestly say at times I feel like I am an outsider. When people in general talk about religion they usually will say Jews, Muslims, christians and catholics. That burns me up. I am a catholic and we are christians. I feel since the religious right has shown up on the scene they are trying to mix it into our politics.

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11:38 am, Oct 15, 2008
DoctorB

It is nothing short of terrifying that people with such extreme, radical, bizarre, & DANGEROUS religious beliefs are aggressively trying to grab political power in order ram their religious beliefs down the throats of everyone else. They show utter contempt for the doctrine of separation of church & state, which is enshrined in our constitution specifically in order to prevent the kind of thing Palin & other radical right-wing religious crazies are trying to foist upon us. Lest we forget, this country was founded by people who were persecuted by a government which punished anyone who refused to conform to the government's religuious beliefs.
It is crucial now for everyone who doesn't share Palin's warped world view to rise up & demand a full airing of her beliefs & agenda for turning the USA into an evangelical born-again Christian nation. She wants to destroy the freedom that makes us the greatest country on earth. We can't let her get away with this!!

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8:39 pm, Oct 17, 2008
Aranxa

Muthee exorcised Palins inner witch, but what he really should have done was exorcise her inner bitch. Maybe he just got confused with the proper American dialect.

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1:59 am, Oct 19, 2008
sippewissett

Palin's friend said it best, "The idea of Palin becoming vice president "scares the shit out of me," If it scares her after knowing Palin for years, imagine how much more worried we should be for a huge percentage of the electorate still asking, "Who is Sarah Palin?" If some portion of the public still thinks she is that perky speaker who simply drops her "g's", they are not vetting her to be commander-in-chief. Palin's record of "governance" exposes a combination of cronyism and simple-minded tax-cutting as the answer to societal troubles -- accompanied of course by beliefs such as those exposed in this article. The combination is truly SCARY for those who care about individual rights, let alone how we could look to the rest of the world with this simple creature as our leader.

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6:34 pm, Oct 27, 2008
pacifistgunslinger

Apparently these latter day Jeebus heads don't listen to themselves, First, they tell you "it's God's plan," and next they blubber on about how belief is free will. Can't have it both ways; either god has a plan or he doesn't, either you're free to do something or you're constrained by a "plan." Make up my mind!

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3:18 pm, Oct 29, 2008
joetheplumber2

Obama 08

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1:00 pm, Nov 3, 2008
joetheplumber2

test

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1:00 pm, Nov 3, 2008
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Palin's Pastor Problem

by Gail Sheehy

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& Deirdre English

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