The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (September 05, 2008)

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05 Sep 2008 10:58 am

Palin In Wasilla

A reader writes:

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!

By accident? Second half of the Wasilla appearance after the jump.