Sarah Palin as a Leader for the Christian Right

How much is Sarah Palin's new book tailored to evangelical Christian readers? Her writing partner for Going Rogue, Lynn Vincent, is a longtime editor at World magazine, which practices "biblical worldview journalism." Though the book is published by an imprint of HarperCollins, it is being distributed to Christian booksellers by Zondervan, the world's leading publisher of Bibles. And Going Rogue brims with testimony about Palin's Christian faith. Its opening pages relate how Palin's daughter Piper literally became the poster child for the antiabortion group Alaska Right to Life by posing for a picture with "pretend angel wings fastened to her soft shoulders."

[See photos of Sarah Palin and her family.]

The book's final paragraph, meanwhile, reads like an altar call, the part of a church service when pew sitters are invited to commit their lives to Christ. "I do know there is a God," the former Alaska governor writes. "My life is in his hands. I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over."

Though most of the talk surrounding the release of Going Rogue revolves around how it affects Palin's standing as a political figure, including her chances of winning the White House, should she choose to run, the book is as much poised to heighten Palin's profile as a Christian leader. "It's a mistake to frame all this in the context of her potential candidacy," Mark DeMoss, one of the country's top Christian media specialists, says of Going Rogue. "She wants to tell her story and the story of her personal faith journey." At a time when politically conservative evangelicals lack a national figurehead, Palin's ability to connect with them could also deepen her appeal to a key part of the Republican base. "Christian audiences could respond to this like they did when George W. Bush talked about his faith," says John Green, a religion and politics expert at the University of Akron. "This community takes faith very seriously and likes people who talk about their faith journey."

Until now, that part of Palin's story has been mostly implied. As John McCain's vice presidential running mate last year, she generally avoided talk of her faith and its influence on her politics. But word of her decision to carry her pregnancy to term despite knowing her son Trig would be born with Down syndrome was an inspiration to antiabortion activists, mostly Roman Catholics and evangelicals. News that Palin's unwed teen daughter Bristol was pregnant and would give birth had a similar effect. "[The Palins] should be commended once again for not just talking about their pro-life and pro-family values," Focus on the Family's James Dobson said at the time, "but living them out even in the midst of trying circumstances."

After the campaign, Palin began opening up about her evangelical beliefs. "I'm going to choose the creator's idea of perfection over society's definition of perfection any day," she told an Indiana Right to Life dinner in April, discussing the decision to forgo an abortion and have Trig. Her first big political speech outside Alaska after Election Day, it was sprinkled with religious imagery, including references to the Declaration of Independence as a "holy text" and to the "hand of the creator" in sculpting Alaska's dramatic landscape.

Going Rogue fleshes out Palin's faith narrative. She describes her decision to undergo baptism in a lake at a Pentecostal Bible camp after her family left the Catholic Church. "I got into the habit of reading Scripture before I got out of bed every morning," she writes of her teenage years, "and making sure it was the last thing I did at night." The book tells of Palin's decision to worship at a nondenominational Bible church as an adult and of the important role prayer plays in her everyday life.

It also suggests that some of her faith-based views caused friction with the McCain campaign, adding to Palin's rogue status as a running mate. "I know the word 'creationism' evokes images of wild-eyed fundamentalists burying evidence of any kind of evolution under an avalanche of Bible verses," she writes of explaining her take on Darwinism to McCain's incredulous campaign manager. "But I needed the campaign to know they weren't going to put words in my mouth on this issue."

In promoting the book, Palin is building on that Christian outsider theme. She accuses the news media of singling out conservative religious politicians like her for unfair treatment. "I do absolutely notice that some of the conservative Christians who are members of Congress . . . it seems like the leftist media treats them a little bit different," she said during a recent interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. Such sentiments are likely to resonate with evangelicals, many of whom feel embattled by the secular culture. "A lot of evangelicals say, 'The press covers us the same way—she must be one of us,' " says Green.