Sarah Palin's Bizarre Religious Beliefs

Bill Berkowitz: Why Do Sarah Palin's Bizarre Religious Beliefs Continue To Get A Pass From The Mainstream Media?

Last spring, when the mainstream media's feasted on Pastor John Hagee's anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic sermons, Senator McCain was forced to repudiate the Pastor's endorsement. Why then did the mainstream media give Sarah Palin a pass regarding her -- some would say -- astonishing religious beliefs and affiliations?

A BuzzQuiz: Which do you know more about?

a) Levi Johnston's relationship with Sarah Palin's daughter.

b) Sarah Palin's religious beliefs and affiliations.

If your answer is a), read on; you've got a few things to learn about. If you answered b), read on anyway.

During the presidential campaign, the religious convictions of the candidates frequently dominated the headlines. However, unlike stories about whether Barack Obama was secretly a Muslim masquerading as a Christian, or whether John McCain was sufficiently loyal to the Christian right's social agenda, and unlike the reputation-tarnishing videos of sermons delivered by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Pastor John Hagee, the religious beliefs of Sarah Palin remained mostly a mystery. While her beliefs drew some attention from the mainstream media, her religious convictions and connections never received Rev. Wright-or-Pastor Hagee-like coberage.

In early 2008, when an assortment of Republican Party presidential hopefuls were beating the bushes for endorsements from Religious Right leaders, Senator John McCain's team landed a major player: Pastor John Hagee. On February 28 of last year in a nationally televised press conference, McCain proudly accepted Hagee's political endorsement and he went one step further: he endorsed Hagee.

Hagee, the pastor of the 19,000-member San Antonio, Texas-based Cornerstone Church -- a multi-million dollar evangelical enterprise -- is also the founder of Christians United for Israel, a Christian Zionist lobbying group supporting conservative Israeli politics and politicians. "Think of CUFI as a Christian version of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)," the powerful pro-Israel lobby, Hagee told The Jerusalem Post in February 2006, a few days before the organization's first summit.

In May 2008, Bruce Wilson, a co-founder of the blog Talk2Action, wrote that he had "discovered an astonishing audio recording of a sermon, by ... Hagee, in which [he] elaborates on his view that Hitler and the Nazis were divine agents sent by God to ... chase Europe's Jews towards Palestine."

Hagee's "God sent Hitler" sermon was given in late 2005, broadcast internationally, and sold by John Hagee Ministries through 2008 as part of a three-sermon DVD set titled "Jerusalem: Countdown To Crisis" (Hagee's ministry still sells a CD version of the set). The find was one of many Wilson discoveries. Delving deep into the archives, Wilson uncovered a host of anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-abortion, and anti-gay rights commentaries, including one where Hagee pointed out that "As a nation, America is under the curse of God, even now."

Wilson's short video, featuring a recording of Hagee preaching about how God had sent Hitler to hunt the Jews and force them to Israel, went viral roughly 24 hours after Sam Stein of the Huffington Post covered it and then Keith Olbermann on MSNBC's "Countdown" picked up the story. >From there, Wilson's minimalist packaging, which had little more than scrolling text that mirrored Hagee's words, quickly moved to mainstream broadcast networks and newspapers. Then it was shown around the world by numerous media outlets, including Iranian state television.

Hagee's unusual utterances became the story and McCain was forced to disassociate himself and repudiate his endorsement. Hagee slunk off the national stage, no doubt dismayed that he wouldn't be the political player in Election 2008 that he thought he would be.

Flash forward to September of last year. McCain, now the GOP's presidential candidate, chooses a relatively obscure political figure, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, as his running mate Palin got off to a brilliant start; she wowed the GOP faithful at the Minneapolis convention and then hit the ground running with a few choice sound-bites and catch-phrases, a decidedly combative spirit, a designer-fashioned wardrobe, and a former beauty contestant's carriage. She became an only-in-America instant celebrity.

When a CNN reporter asked GOP campaign spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton about Palin's religious beliefs, she "would only say the Republican vice presidential candidate has 'deep religious convictions.'"

It was known that she was "a practicing Pentecostal," as CNN reported, and that she had once "belonged" to the Wasilla Assembly of God church in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, and had been, for the past six years, a member of the non-denominational Wasilla Bible Church. It was also known that, as CNN pointed out, and as Palin's former pastor Tim McGraw acknowledged "that like many Pentecostal churches, some members speak in tongues," although he allowed that he had never seen Palin doing it.

According to CNN, "Some Pentecostals from Assembly of God also believe in 'faith healing' and the 'end times.'" "Our basic belief is that God is God and he knows where history is going and he has a purposeful plan and within the middle of that plan we live in an environment in our world where certain events would take place," McGraw told CNN. "Sarah wasn't taught to look for one particular sign -- a cataclysmic sign. She knew as every Christian does ... that God is sovereign and he is in control."

When Wilson and his research partner, "Ruth," began looking into Palin's religious background, they uncovered a great deal of material that led to the production of more than 20 stories and six short video documentaries about her church affiliations.

Unlike the Hagee discoveries, however, little of what Wilson found resonated with the mainstream media, a media awash in Palinography seemed more interested in her family life, personal style, and wardrobe rather than her worshipping habits.

Granted her religious beliefs and her church's practices are not easily discernible; they are a very complicated, a puzzle that is extremely difficult to unravel. To this day, Wilson himself is not sure why the media passed on the larger parts of the Palin story. In a Religion Dispatches interview with Wilson - which covered a number of media-related and religious questions -- he told me that in the beginning the stories they were putting out probably "sounded outlandish -- millions of Christians worldwide are trying to bring about an earthly utopia by driving out demons alleged to infest cities and towns, inanimate objects -- cars, alarm clocks, rosary beads, big rocks, toothbrushes whatever -- ... [and] absurd."

The Palin "stories connected [her] to a religious movement that relatively few Americans know even exists, which looks acts and holds theological beliefs, even a basic outlook on life, that is very different from what secular and liberal America might think or envision as coming from the 'religious right,'" Wilson pointed out.

"And the religious ideas powering the movement are very strange, novel that is, compared to Christian theology of the past several hundred years." Wilson's challenge was huge: in the midst ... of a presidential election, [try to] establish an audience for explaining a new school of thought that cuts radically against the grain of orthodox thought."

Although the headlines of the Palin stories "were provocative enough: 'Palin's Movement Urges Godly to Plunder Wealth of Godless'; 'Palin Linked to Second Witch Hunter'; 'Palin's Spiritual Warfare Network Partners With Homeland Security'; 'Palin Put Religious War Advocate on Alaska Suicide Prevention Council,' ... [and] our work did get out through some smaller progressive media platforms," for the most part the mainstream media pursued other Palin-related stories.

Finally, "when some mainstream media outlets did stories which, to be honest, seemed to be quite heavily derivative of our work," Wilson added, "they didn't credit us; and our stories may have been too dense for the 24/7 news cycle and too full of unrecognized names of individuals, organizations, and concepts."

Given that Palin will be in the news for quite some time to come, Wilson and his partner will certainly have more opportunities to bring their information to light.

(My complete Religion Dispatches interview with Bruce Wilson -- http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religiousright/1275/the_new_christianity%3A_what_the_mainstream_media_has_missed_/)

ENDS

© Scoop Media