Sarah Palin’s Religion: Pentecostal/Assembly of God

Sarah Palin has been a member of The Assembly of God church in her hometown of Wasilla since she was a child. The Wasilla Assembly of God is just one of many thousands of Assemblies of God churches in the United States. The Assemblies of God is the largest Pentecostal domination with millions of followers and more than 280,000 churches in over 200 countries. Pentecostalism is a ‘divine intervention’ Christian ideology that is one of the fastest growing religions in the world. To say that Pentecostals are conservative in their reading of the Bible is a gigantic understatement. Followers of this doctrine believe it is God’s will to defeat all opposition and govern society according to Biblical scripture. The Pentecostal culture teaches that when Jesus is ready to return to earth, there will be an army of soldiers ready to do battle with evil and cleanse the world with piety. At the very extreme end of Pentecostal fundamentalism is the belief in The Rapture. In this doctrine, Jesus descends to earth to lead true believers to heaven while non-believers and all sinners will be left behind to endure the suffering of the damned.

While Palin claims to be a ‘non-denominational Christian, The Wasilla Assembly of God church, that she and her family attend, has deep connections with an extremist, subversive off-shoot of the Assemblies of God known as the Third Wave. Wasilla’s Assembly of God pastor is Reverend Ed Kalnins. He and others directly involved in the Third Wave movement have visited with Morningstar Ministries, one of the major ministries of the Third Wave movement located in South Carolina.

Palin’s reluctance to call her faith Pentecostal is interesting. When asked, she states that she attends a non-denominational church. That is true as long as you check your own views at the door. Yet, the evidence is clear: The Assembly of God Church of Wasilla is part of the larger organization, the Assemblies of God, and their leaders are strongly implicated in sharing the extremist views of The Third Wave movement. Many associates and members come from the ranks of the secretive ‘king-makers’ discussed in the section on The Queen Makers.

[Track] is going to be deployed to Iraq in September, pray for military men and women who are striving to do what is right also for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that is what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God’s plan, so bless them with your prayers of protection over our soldiers.

To make sense of Palin’s religious affiliations, it helps to look at a thumbnail sketch of how, from Pentecostal roots throughout her early life, her religious self has moved further and further into the more expansive Pentecostal evolution towards extreme beliefs combined with political clout.

The First Wave: This is also referred to as the” Pentecostal” movement that occurred at the turn of the century. Agnes Ozman was a student at Bethel Bible College on Topeka, Kansas in 1901. She claimed to have experienced what she called “the baptism of the Holy Spirit” which was manifested by her ability to speak in tongues.

In 1906, Los Angeles was the location for the Azusa Street Revival. In that wave of Pentecostalism, congregations were moved by the religious fervor that came with electrifying rhetoric, the ‘laying on of hands’ in prayer and in healing practices and some people who spoke in tongues. In the more conventional religious groups, the behaviors of those at the revival strayed from the true theology Pentecostal faith. Today, the revival is considered by historians to be the primary catalyst for the spread of Pentecostalism in the 20th century. These two events are pivotal to faith in today’s Pentecostal denominations.

The Second Wave: or ‘neo-Pentecostal’ movement emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. It also had as a cornerstone the ability to speak in tongues. It is claimed that it occurred at an Episcopal church in Van Nuys, California, where Dennis Bennett served as rector. Father Dennis Bennett was the Episcopal priest who told his congregation in 1960 that he had received a personal Pentecost or Baptism from the Spirit.

Dennis explained that he, and then many of his congregation, had been bestowed with the ability to speak in tongues. He relied on a passage from the book of Acts in the Bible (Acts 2:4, NKJV):"They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance".

The Third Wave: This is the theology of ‘end of times’ belief. A select group of Christians will receive divine powers that will enable them to take authority over the existing church and the world. There will be a complete restructuring of the church under the authority of Prophets and Apostles and others anointed by God. The Third Wave movement recognizes that both holy and demonic forces exist in a struggle to control every aspect of our lives. In the Third Wave, the young generation will be trained to serve in ‘Joel's Army’ to rise up against evil and claim the world for God. They believe they are forming a post-denominational church to take the world for the end times.

Time will tell the depth of Palin's religious background and its influence on her public policy whether or not she and McCain win the election. As Governor, she signed a proclamation establishing Christian Heritage Week and said creationism should be taught in the classroom.

In another example, her rhetoric demonstrates the close tie she sees between church and state: "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built," she said. "So pray for that."

"Really, all of that stuff doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God," she said. "Your job is going to be to be out there reaching the people — hurting people — throughout Alaska and we can work together to make sure God's will be done here." That says much in itself.

Reverend Bill Welch, superintendent of the denomination's Alaska District had this to say: "The fact is she has grown up and has associated with one of our Assemblies of God churches, which is a Pentecostal church, for years. Pentecostalism is bound to have some kind of impact and influence on her."

In a recent radio interview, host Amy Goodman had a chance to talk with Fred Clarkson, an independent journalist in Springfield who expressed concern over Palin’s religious beliefs. Clarkson is eminently qualified in the fields of politics and religion having covered both issues as a journalist for two decades. He is also the author of ‘Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics’ and ‘Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy’. Here is an excerpt from that conversation:

GOODMAN: Let's begin with you, Fred Clarkson. What are you most concerned about in Governor Palin's views?

CLARKSON: Well, I'm most concerned with the point that you raised earlier, and that is her well-documented belief that she's living in the "end times," we're all living in the "end times," and that her interpretation of the Book of Revelation may be driving her public policy and particularly her foreign and military policy views.

GOODMAN: Explain what is meant by "end times."

CLARKSON: Well, that means that if you take the Bible, and you begin with Genesis and Creation and the Book of Revelation, which describes God's plan for the end of the world, we're at the end of the book, and that it ends in a bloody conflagration before God's people are saved. And she and people who think like her believe them, themselves, to be the people who are going to be saved, and the rest of us are not looking so good.

GOODMAN: And these comments about the war being a task of God, the Alaska pipeline, you know, praying for the companies and the people.

CLARKSON: Yes, certainly, the idea that the war in Iraq could be a task of God could be interpreted in that way. But I think, more specifically, it’s a conflation of one’s particular political or public policy views with that of the will of God that makes for a very unstable kind of political thinking.