{"id":2919,"date":"2008-08-30T21:17:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-30T21:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/08\/sarah-palins-catholic-roots-updated.html"},"modified":"2008-08-30T21:17:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-30T21:17:00","slug":"sarah-palins-catholic-roots-updated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/08\/sarah-palins-catholic-roots-updated.html","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Palin’s Catholic roots–UPDATED"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Multiple sources<\/a> say John McCain’s running mate was baptized Catholic<\/a>, but after that it gets murky. <\/p>\n

One blogger put it this way: <\/p>\n

Like most Pentecostal denominations, going all the way back to the Azusa Revival a century ago, the Assemblies of God ordains women as pastors. Palin, born a Catholic, left a denomination that denied pastoral authority to women in order to join one that embraced women as leaders \u2014 while still holding to traditional social views on issues like \u201clife\u201d and sexuality. Unlike among the Southern Baptists or conservative Calvinists, it\u2019s not unusual in Pentecostal circles to find women who are both church leaders and mothers of young children. Palin belongs, it seems, to that tradition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Christianity Today, meantime, takes a closer look<\/a>:<\/p>\n

John McCain’s vice presidential pick Sarah Palin has a Pentecostal background, but reporters seem to be struggling to define her faith.<\/p>\n

A profile in the Wall Street Journal says she’s Lutheran.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post writes, “Her evangelical Christian faith — she believes in creationism and is adamantly opposed to abortion — may help [McCain] court skeptical social conservatives.”<\/p>\n

Hm. I’m not sure those two beliefs necessarily link to an “evangelical Christian faith.”<\/p>\n

Instead of assigning a label to her faith, Eric Gorski of the Associated Press reports that a business administrator in Pentecostal Assemblies of God told him that her home church is The Church on the Rock, an independent congregation. A spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign told Gorski that Palin attends different churches and does not consider herself Pentecostal.<\/p>\n

Tennessean religion reporter Bob Smietana writes that Palin grew up among evangelicals, and attended the Wasilla Assembly of God as a teenager and young adult. Smietana writes that while in Juneau, Alaska’s capital, she sometimes attends Juneau Christian Center, an Assemblies of God congregation.<\/p>\n

Boston College professor Alan Wolfe writes at The New Republic that Palin is an evangelical, shaped by the region in which she lives.<\/p>\n

“… she is not a Southern evangelical, and therein lies a tale.”<\/p>\n

Southern Baptists, he writes, became preoccupied with sin, while those in the west were more libertarian where sins could become forgiven.<\/p>\n

He writes, “Sarah Palin named two of her children after witches, once took drugs, and refused to sign a bill forbidding domestic benefits for gay couples. Any one of these–especially the first–would raise suspicion in the eyes of a traditional Southern Baptist.”<\/p>\n

With Richard Land’s high praise, however, I’m not seeing that suspicion quite yet.<\/p>\n

“Palin, the gun-toting mom, has a libertarian streak in politics and a libertarian streak in religion,” Wolfe writes. ” … [W]hile Palin may be quickly endorsed by men speaking in Southern accents, she is neither a Billy Graham nor a Jimmy Carter. American evangelicalism, like John McCain, has many mansions. Sarah Palin inhabits only one of them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

UPDATE:<\/b> I see that John Allen has done some ruminating<\/a> on Palin’s religious background, and gives particular attention to a phrase from her first appearance that struck a chord with me, the idea of a “Servant’s Heart”<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Those who watched Palin\u2019s announcement speech yesterday in Dayton, Ohio, might have noticed a throaty roar from the crowd when she said, \u201cWe are expected to govern with integrity and goodwill and clear convictions and a servant\u2019s heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

That reaction wasn\u2019t simply about approval of good government; the phrase \u201cservant\u2019s heart\u201d is a popular bit of Evangelical terminology, used as a short-hand for Christian humility. A quick web search reveals thousands of churches, ministries, and bands that use some variation of \u201cservant\u2019s heart\u201d in the title; there\u2019s even a residential cleaning service in Calgary called \u201cServant\u2019s Heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

The term is so common, in fact, that Christian comedian Tim Hawkins has poked fun at it. \u201cI hate it when somebody tells me I\u2019ve got a servant\u2019s heart,\u201d Hawkins says. \u201cIt means they want me to start stacking chairs.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Palin pledged to govern with a \u201cservant\u2019s heart,\u201d Christians, especially those with an Evangelical background, had no trouble recognizing one of their own, even without the convenience of a denominational label on Palin\u2019s r\u00e9sum\u00e9. (It\u2019s akin to a public figure making reference to a \u201cnear occasion of sin\u201d or a \u201cstate of grace\u201d; even without an official bio, Catholics would recognize a fellow member of the tribe.)<\/p>\n

Palin\u2019s nomination, therefore, does not simply mark a breakthrough for women, or for western states. She also puts a face on the fastest-growing and most dynamic segment of global Christianity these days \u2013 even if it\u2019s proving difficult for journalists and political handicappers to get their minds around.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Multiple sources say John McCain’s running mate was baptized Catholic, but after that it gets murky. One blogger put it this way: Like most Pentecostal denominations, going all the way back to the Azusa Revival a century ago, the Assemblies of God ordains women as pastors. Palin, born a Catholic, left a denomination that denied…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-politicians"],"yoast_head":"\nSarah Palin's Catholic roots-UPDATED - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/08\/sarah-palins-catholic-roots-updated.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sarah Palin's Catholic roots-UPDATED - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Multiple sources say John McCain’s running mate was baptized Catholic, but after that it gets murky. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}