Rod Dreher’s latest post is quite long, but well worth reading. God save us all if ex-governor Palin becomes President:
Did you catch this response Sarah Palin made last week to Barbara Walters, when Walters asked about the West Bank settlements?:
“I disagree with the Obama administration on that. I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”
When I heard that, I thought, oh, here we go. It’s not because of her view on the settlements, even though I disagree with her. It’s her bizarro view that Jews are going to be “flocking” to Israel in the days and months ahead. I thought that this was probably evidence that she’s a Late Great Planet Earther.
More evidence, from the Charlotte Observer today:
Sarah Palin, the hottest name in the Republican Party, took a detour from her book-signing tour Sunday to dine with Billy Graham at his mountaintop home in Montreat. “He’s followed her career and likes her strong stand on faith,” said son Franklin Graham, who was present for the 2 1/2-hour get-together. “Daddy feels God was using her to wake America up.”
The former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate told Billy Graham about how she came to faith in God as a girl in Bible camp.
“What the Bible says about Israel, Iran and Iraq.” That’s a tip-off that she reads the Bible as a guide to geopolitical events in the End Times. This is very common among a large portion of Evangelical Christians — according to a leading expert, between 50 and 60 million Americans hold Palin’s belief about the Jewish ingathering to Israel in advance of the Apocalypse — but can you imagine an American president making her foreign policy based on a belief that “The Late, Great Planet Earth” is a reliable source of information about the future?
Well, this is great news if you are one of the Protestants who do hold these beliefs. But if you are not, then you should be alarmed. I admit that I think Evangelicals get a bad rap from liberal Jews, many of whom are so repulsed by the Evangelicals’ political and social conservatism that they unfairly and unwisely devalue the value of their Zionism. But supporting the settlements policy because there has to be room for all the Jews in the world to come home to Israel in advance of Armageddon? Astonishing. Again, though, if you are convinced that we’re in the Last Days, and history’s end game will involve this particular set of events, then you thank God that the U.S. might be led by A President Who Gets It.
Which brings us to the following e-mail I received from a friend who’s a conservative reader of this blog, and who writes to defend Andrew Sullivan’s relentless criticism of Palin. Read on for that text, posted with her permission:
I think Andrew Sullivan deserves a medal for his ongoing investigation of all things Palin. She is a menace to this country, as he suggests. She is a toxic mix of ignorance, charisma (or so they say), anger (I would even say hatred), and millions and millions of dollars in funding from the Murdoch empire and from a big chunk of the Christian right. People who should know better, like the Grahams, are giving her significant financial and moral backing – note the use of Franklin Graham’s organization’s airplane to take her to Fort Bragg (where she raised donations to her PAC, and had her father attack the President’s foreign policy): http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34110893/ns/politics-more_politics/ And she’ll be heading off to Fort Hood soon.
Her words have an impact on millions of her followers, and she is capable of leading a large percentage of the US population in the direction of some terribly dangerous policies. Just to pick one example, consider what she said to Barbara Walters about why the US should support Israeli settlements. Do you really think that US foreign policy should be based on the “Left Behind” novels? I don’t. (To read more about Palin and the Rapture, please scroll down).
Andrew has not concentrated solely on the Trig Truther issue – right from the moment Palin stepped on that Ohio stage with McCain, he has been one of the only prominent mainstream journalists looking into her career in Alaska. Through his site, I have found many links to Alaska-based sites that have provided a wealth of information on her record as mayor of Wasilla and governor of Alaska, and which I continue to read on a regular basis. Let me tell you, it ain’t a pretty picture. Yet, she is now selling millions of books, and has convinced a lot of people that she has been subjected to unusual scrutiny by the media. Baloney! I will admit that my initial opposition to her was based on personal reasons – I was horrified that a woman with a special needs infant would run for VP, and the discovery that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant was icing on that cake. But my investigation of her actual record as an elected official made me realize the full enormity of McCain’s decision to put her “a heartbeat away” from controlling the US military.
I have written to you before about my worry that someone will try to kill the President, and, if something like that happens (God forbid), Palin will have to share some of the blame. She is more dangerous than Glenn Beck in that she could actually end up holding political power. He is just an entertainer, and I think he knows it. Palin really has people convinced that she is on a mission from God. I have friends who are fairly sophisticated, well-educated people who will not so much as listen to any of the facts about Palin. They seem to be mesmerized by her.
I don’t defend everything Andrew writes – I’m sick to death of his attacks on Pope Benedict, and I was furious that he accused you of “smearing” him when you pointed out, quite accurately, that he it is not clear why he stays in the Catholic Church, since he quite obviously doesn’t believe a lot of what the Church teaches. is a cafeteria Catholic. But when it comes to Palin, he has done a real service to this country.
This confirms what I have been saying for years – that right-wing evangelicals are more dangerous in the public square than secularists. They believe, quite literally, that God desires widespread death and destruction and that they are doing God’s will by fomenting war in the middle east. These people are dangerous. John Nelson Darby has a lot to answer for.
Dang Morning’s Minion, how you know about JND? I grew up in the Plymouth Brethren. Not too many people know that rapture theology and dispensationalism originated with him. Props man.
With Palins reference toward “days”, “weeks”, and “Months” ahead It would seem if this argument is taken to it’s logical extension why is she going on a book tour since the END is going to occur before her tour is over.
Speaking as an ex Evangelical be careful of assuming what they believe. Catholics have a tough time getting that whole priesthood believer stuff down and how that applies in a typical Protestant viewpoint.
As a former Protestant we loved how we could have different opinions. Just saying.
By the way if I believe the Virgin Mary appeared to 3 kids in Portugal and Russia would have to repent of its errors would I would be a no go here on Voa Nova?
In the real world there is a much variance of opinion on these subjects even within the most fundamentalist of sects.
That is difficult for a Catholic mind to understand but again that is why they are Protestant
All these b aside Morning Minion is quite incorrect. My neighbors that are often evengelical are
not wanting to “fomenting war in the middle east”.
They are generally good people and making a cartoon of them is not only unwise in a Christian sense but in a real world sense is naive and leads to false conclusions.
Oh yes. All those millions killed by right wing evangelicals in the 20th century keep piling up. Especially the 1.5 billion children aborted by right wing evangelicals. MM has once again given us a spot-on, unbiased, modest conclusion.
Especially the 1.5 billion children aborted by right wing evangelicals.
Matt,
Strange, but I keep reading MM’s post over and over, and I still haven’t found anything about abortion in it.
Matt: do you really not think it is possible that both the secular Left and the evangelical Right are wrong? Do you really not think it is possible that both are, in their own ways, in the service of the Culture of Death? Do we really have to look at things through the lens of an either-or dualism? If we reject abortion, must we accept warmongering? If Sarah Palin is right about abortion, does it mean that she should not be held accountable for her other views? Is there truly no third way, no distinctly Catholic way?
“right-wing evangelicals are more dangerous in the public square than secularists”
Yeah the left doesn’t support wholesale slaughter of the innocent (abortion) or dehunamization (euthanasia).
Time to take a deep breath MM.
Well, I am all for Sarah Palin & her ilk being raptured. Can’t be soon enough. This’d turn into the land of milk and honey.
I wish I had a dollar for every time someone brings up abortion for no good reason. So, here’s some data for no good reason: God’s own country’s teen abortion rate is seven times higher than the Netherlands’, the pregnancy rate 9 times higher. Must be all those abstinence pledges.
Those who look so kindly upon the evangelical right as co-workers in the fight against Godless secularism should take a look at what the hugely popular and influential John MacArthur recently said about the Manhattan Declaration.
http://www.shepherdsfellowship.org/pulpit/Posts.aspx?ID=4444
Here are the main reasons I am not signing the Manhattan Declaration, even though a few men whom I love and respect have already affixed their names to it:
Although I obviously agree with the document’s opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, and other key moral problems threatening our culture, the document falls far short of identifying the one true and ultimate remedy for all of humanity’s moral ills: the gospel. The gospel is barely mentioned in the Declaration… the gospel itself is nowhere presented (much less explained) in the document or any of the accompanying literature. Indeed, that would be a practical impossibility because of the contradictory views held by the broad range of signatories regarding what the gospel teaches and what it means to be a Christian.
This is precisely where the document fails most egregiously. It assumes from the start that all signatories are fellow Christians whose only differences have to do with the fact that they represent distinct “communities.” Points of disagreement are tacitly acknowledged but are described as “historic lines of ecclesial differences” rather than fundamental conflicts of doctrine and conviction with regard to the gospel and the question of which teachings are essential to authentic Christianity.
Instead of acknowledging the true depth of our differences, the implicit assumption (from the start of the document until its final paragraph) is that Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant Evangelicals and others all share a common faith in and a common commitment to the gospel’s essential claims. The document repeatedly employs expressions like “we [and] our fellow believers”; “As Christians, we . . .”; and “we claim the heritage of . . . Christians.” That seriously muddles the lines of demarcation between authentic biblical Christianity and various apostate traditions.
The Declaration therefore constitutes a formal avowal of brotherhood between Evangelical signatories and purveyors of different gospels. That is the stated intention of some of the key signatories, and it’s hard to see how secular readers could possibly view it in any other light…
This is neither a novel approach nor a strategic stand for evangelicals to take. It ought to be clear to all that the agenda behind the recent flurry of proclamations and moral pronouncements we’ve seen promoting ecumenical co-belligerence is the viewpoint Charles Colson has been championing for more than two decades. (It is not without significance that his name is nearly always at the head of the list of drafters when these statements are issued.) He explained his agenda in his 1994 book The Body, in which he argued that the only truly essential doctrines of authentic Christian truth are those spelled out in the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds. I responded to that argument at length in Reckless Faith. I stand by what I wrote then.
In short, support for The Manhattan Declaration would not only contradict the stance I have taken since long before the original “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” document was issued; it would also tacitly relegate the very essence of gospel truth to the level of a secondary issue. That is the wrong way—perhaps the very worst way—for evangelicals to address the moral and political crises of our time. Anything that silences, sidelines, or relegates the gospel to secondary status is antithetical to the principles we affirm when we call ourselves evangelicals.
MacArthur is better respected and more influential among Reformed Protestants than most of the people who signed this thing. These people are not your friends. A least a secularist will generally be willing to concede that you, as a Catholic, are a Christian. As questioners and critical thinkers, they may make for better mission territory as well…
Be careful with how and why you vote. A fundamental re-alignment of the political system in this country is desperately needed. I no longer feel comfortable voting into power these Christian Embassy types of Dominionist and Reconstructionist persuasion who support Israel for the purpose of getting the Armageddon train rolling, just because of the fact that they are anti-abortion. The Republican Party has gone off the rails.
If we so feel a need to have enemies, why conjure up secularist enemies in our own minds when there are 5-Point Calvinists out there who are proud to tell us that they are (still) the worst “enemies” we could ever have?
We have our Fatima Crusader nuts in our ranks, it’s true, but I’m not aware of any at this point in time who have presidential aspirations.
Mickey, I happen to agree with you that right and left are both wrong in their own ways, and I have always opposed the Iraq war as well as extending the mission to nation building in Afghanistan. But MM wasn’t talking about right and left. And he wasn’t simply saying both “sides” are wrong, much less equally wrong. He singled out “right wing evangelicals” like Sarah Palin–that’s Evangelical Christians who are conservative Republicans. And he said they are much more dangerous than secularists in the public sector. The massive human exterminations that occurred in the 20th century were all perpetraqted by the very opposite of “right wing evangelicals,” as is the continual slaughter of what now amounts to 1.5 billion unborn children. It is beyond absurd to compare that bloodshed to what “right wing Evangelicals” such as Sarah Palin have done and would do, and to say Palin is the more dangerous. Please give me an estimate of genocide victims creditable to Billy Graham. In case MM hasn’t noticed Obama is sending MORE troops to Afghanistan and is embracing all the human rights abuses in the war on terror that W handed on to him less than one year ago, even as he is trying to massively expand abortion worldwide through the UN and at home by making it free in health care and what he has already done in embryo destruction. To suggest that Huckabee or Palin are not just on par with but more bloodthirsty than Obama, not to mention the secular anti-human leaders of the last 100 years, isn’t Catholic, it is blindness motivated by hatred of Christian social justice as applied beyond the filter of the Democratic party.
Jeff, you’re just wrong that MacArthur is more representative of Evangelical non-Catholics than are the authors and signers of the Manhattan Declaration. And so much for the liberal commitment to ecumenism–several archbishops and cardinals sign on, but you ask them to treat such fellow Christians as enemies. Chuck Colson is our enemy and abortion loving Obama is our friend. Such is the counsel of MM and Jeff. Partisan yes; Vatican II and seamless garment it ain’t.
To suggest that Huckabee or Palin are not just on par with but more bloodthirsty than Obama, not to mention the secular anti-human leaders of the last 100 years, isn’t Catholic, it is blindness motivated by hatred of Christian social justice as applied beyond the filter of the Democratic party.
Matt,
You totally ignore the main point of the post, which is that Sarah Palin is basing foreign policy statements not on reality but on her beliefs about the “End Times” — beliefs that Catholics do not share.
She is quoted as saying, “More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.” In reality, Jews as a percentage of the population of Israel are in decline, a fact which the Israeli government is well aware. Jews do not believe in the “End Times.” The Jewish settlements in occupied territories are not an attempt to make space for an influx of Jews into Israel as a harbinger of the “End Times.”
The prospect of a President Palin making US foreign policy based on Biblical “prophecies” instead of a realistic assessment of world politics is indeed frightening. The fact that Sarah Palin opposes abortion doesn’t make it any less frightening and seems to me totally irrelevant.
David: yes, that was my point. And you’re right, her anti-abortion views (and actions) don’t make this particular view any less frightening.
An example of Catholic neo-con cynicism: Catholic liberals who question whether or not the logic of Humanae Vitae is compelling are anathematized, but evangelicals of contraceptive mentality who think that Humanae Vitae is just as ridiculous as most other papal encyclicals are given a pass because their politics happen to dovetail with those of the neo-cons. Sorry, you may love them, but they don’t love you back.
That’s right, go ahead Matt. Hold contempt for Catholic progressives who actually share the same eucharist with you (and are bound together with you in the Body of Christ, whether you like it or not) and keep on trying to build alliances with those who laugh in your “Romanist” face as they ridicule transubstantiation and our view of the eucharist, papal primacy, sacramentalism, the ministerial priesthood, the Marian doctrines, and our soteriology. Does it reveal your real religion to be anti-abortionism?
Don’t get me wrong. A Pro-life position is the only one that can be credibly held by a Catholic, or anyone presuming to call himself a Christian for that matter, but if that is the only thing that matters to you, to the point that you are willing to embrace a non-Catholic “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” philosophy, then you’ve embraced the cause to the point that it’s become a form of idolatry.
As for my being wrong about MacArthur being more representative of Evangelical non-Catholics than are the authors and signers of the Manhattan Declaration, are you kidding me? Among Reformed Protestants? Who is? Colson? Dobson? Neither one of them is a pastor, and neither one of them does expository preaching. MacArthur is enormously popular as a preacher. His Grace to You program is heard daily on just about every Christian radio station in the country. Al Mohler signed the Declaration, but he’s not much more friendly towards Catholicism than MacArthur is. Extreme Calvinsim is powerfully resurgent today, and is on it’s way towards taking over the Southern Baptist Convention. R.C. Sproul is another popular preacher and author who is one of the same mind with MacArthur. James White has become hugely influential as well, primarily through the web, as he’s moved on from debating pop-apologists like Patrick Madrid and Gerry Matatics to the media’s favorite scholars such as John Dominic Crossan and Bart Ehrman.
Wake up and snap out of it. Copy and paste your post to AOMIN, Puritanboard, White Horse Inn, Challies, Phil Johnson, CenturiOn, Jazzycat, Turretifan, etc., and see if they care… You can be friends with James White’s minions and vote for a Rushdoony-style of Geneva theocracy if you want to. Not me. Abortion is one thing, and it is certainly a very important thing, but their interests are clearly not the same as our interests. Look to ALL Catholic teaching. Put on ALL of the Seamless Garment, not just some of it.
I’m not saying to embrace the Democratic Party as it is. I’m saying we need a realignment. We need to fight for the party that most of our grandparents once belonged to, instead of the Republican Party, which is made up of a huge army of foot-soldiers who spend their Sundays in evangelical churches fighting unmwittingly for the interests of a few very wealthy guys who spend their Sunday mornings golfing at their local country clubs. Catholic conservatices should be fighting on behalf of Pro-Life Democrats like Michael Sean Winters instead of demonizing them.
As for ecumenisim, yes, it’s certainly worth working with Protestants of good will, but we should look more to working with those like Jim Wallis and the Sojourners types than with the hard-right evangelicals.