An Explanation for Sarah Palin's Sheepishness on Faith and Faith-Based Issues
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
Earlier this week, I noted that the website for Sarah Palin's new PAC is silent on her faith and on faith-based issues--two of her greatest political assets--and wondered aloud about the explanation.
Spiritual Politic's Mark Silk has an answer:
. . . movement evangelicals like Huckabee and Palin don't need to advertise who they are to the movement. They do feel the need to veil it from everybody else. That's why no one could manage to lay hands on the sermons Huck gave when he was a Baptist minister. And why Palin was so exceptionally vague about her religious views and attachments during the campaign. Is anyone fooled? Nope.
I think this argument has a lot of merit. And it makes for a strange dynamic between Christian right candidates and the media: Office-seekers like Mike Huckabee and Palin benefit hugely from their faith-based connection with millions of like-minded believers, provoking the news media to ask probing questions about their religious beliefs. Faith-based candidates take offense, accusing the press of obsessing over their religion and their stances on issues like evolution, as opposed to their positions on traditional policy concerns.
But if candidates exploit their faith for political benefit, shouldn't they have to answer questions about the implications of that faith?
- Read more by Dan Gilgoff.
- Read more about Sarah Palin.
Tags: religion | Sarah Palin
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Reader Comments
Some People are Never Happy
Look Democrats, you won; can't you just enjoy it and give your bashing a rest?
Sheepishness About Her Faith
When every attack dog in the neighborhood goes after one's religion and the intellectual lightweights in the press do the same, it is time to touch upon one's religion lightly. I have for years see AG people treated as intellectual and moral inferiors when in fact, they are anything but that. In point of fact, they are also in the once major church body of which I am aware that is still growing in this culture.
Sheepish? That is drivel. Some real lightweights went after Palin for her Pentecostal faith. They sought to use it against her and still seek to use it against her.
Unless you have something to say, why indulge in this kind of thing. Say something or forget it. My hunch is that you have no desire to lay your own presuppositions out with clarity. I am a bit perplexed how that give you the right to imply that you and your school of minnows are intellectually and politically superior to the governor.
To the contrary, it is the characteristic strategy and posture of of the pantywaist.
Aarah Palin
jim of Mi.
Good point Greg of
Mn.except the sects you mention do not push their beliefs on others like the Evangelical fanatics. It is fine to believe as you wish but do not think what is good for you must also be good for everyone.
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