Taking Palin On Faith

Of all the enticing, fluorescent, mile-wide targets on Sarah Palin (most, I’d venture to guess, designed and enhanced by Palin herself, who seems savvy and cynical enough to know that the more target-rich she is, the more airtime she books, and the more easily she can slip her Me Against the Media card), the sloppiness in her professed Christianity seems the most boobytrapped. I’m scared. Sally Quinn, can you go first?

In her new book Sarah Palin writes that one summer at Bible Camp she “put my life in my creator’s hands and trust Him as I sought my life’s path.” For Palin, this grand divine plan was “a natural progression,” she writes. And later, “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

Which leads me to ask:

What does she believe is God’s plan for her? Does she have any free will or is everything preordained? Can she see something coming and change her mind despite God’s plans for her?

On Faith Panelists Blog: Sarah Palin’s ‘rogue’ Christianity – Sally Quinn

Quinn goes on to tally some of the disappointments and weirdnesses in Palin’s recent history, each introduced by an increasingly ironic, “Did God plan for…”

I’m so grateful you struck first, Sally, but I do side with some of the less strident commenters disagreeing with you here, the ones who rise above calling you JEALOUS of Palin’s AWESOMENESS (Sprayadhesive helpfully points out, “You will NEVER be as popular as Palin! NEVER!”).

Your cooler-headed commenters suggest that the tension between free will and God’s plan, and between the blessings Christians count and the curses they suffer, is not a Palin-specific conflict. This is an elaborate logical maze that, to my knowledge, all Christians navigate, some more successfully than others. I know one girl whose faith disintegrated under the power of this irreconcilability, but still–Palin isn’t alone in seeming to want it both ways.

You’re warmer here, I think:

You would think that God would ask of her to live her life as an example to others of a compassionate loving, caring person. One of the most powerful examples of God’s love in the Bible is that of forgiveness. Turning the other cheek. But Palin’s book is a screed against everyone who ever done her wrong.

She is angry at the campaign staffer for “forcing her to do things she didn’t want to do”, she is angry at the media for asking her questions she couldn’t answer. She is angry at the father of her grandson for being a foolish teenager. She has used this book and all of her Christian charity to do nothing but settle scores. She names names and calls ‘em like she see ‘em.

Ah, yes. I think you’ve nailed the thing about Palin that grates against my understanding of evangelical Christians. At Jerry Falwell’s church I heard sermons on patiently enduring life’s trials, on learning from adversity, on embracing forgiveness, acceptance. I saw Christians shrug, forgive, and pull themselves up with a placid, wholly sincere, “Everything happens for a reason.” Even hate is passed through the sieve of love. In 2002, when CNN asked whether gays and lesbians could attend his church, Jerry Falwell had this to say: “We welcome them to church. We have many gays and lesbians who attend our church, all seeking help and spiritual deliverance from their abnormal lifestyle.” Nasty, but in the language of nice.

Palin doesn’t play that way. She arrived at the RNC in a kind of steely aura of viciousness (her speech is worth revisiting for the ironic accusation that Obama was using change to “promote” his career), turned a slyly enabling, blind eye when her supporters screamed hate speech at her rallies, and has emerged from her trials in a skein of bitterness. She swathes herself in the holy robes of Christianity in order to deflect criticism and to win loyalty from Christians, but lifts them when it’s convenient to kick people in the shins. That’s not very Jesusy.