When John McCain thrust Sarah Palin from relative obscurity into the national media spotlight, his campaign immediately touted her down to earth “Joe six-pack” appeal to the religious base of the Republican party. Sarah Palin was chosen in part to get the votes of evangelicals who were suspect of Senator McCain’s now-elusive liberal streak. But as our politics has shown, being religious is not enough for everyone, as there are always concerns that a candidate might not be the right kind of religious. Barack Obama, for instance, has long made his own religion prominent in his campaign in an effort to get a piece of the evangelical voter pie that republicans have had to themselves for the past few elections. Many voters, however, remain suspicious that he is secretly a Muslim or a follower of some radical black-power variety of Christianity.
Andy Barr writes about Sarah Palin’s brush with religious confusion in his article, “Experts: Palin’s Religion Misunderstood.” He wrote the article in response to a video of Palin being “blessed by a Kenyan bishop against witchcraft [that] has rattled liberal bloggers and fueled scorn among her detractors.” While the mention of witchcraft seems just as bizarre and, as liberal commentator Keith Olberman said, “terrifying,” as Reverend Wright’s tirades, Barr cites many religious experts, including a Harvard professor, to make his point that there was “nothing unusual about what happened” during the blessing, and that “ignorance and intolerance” have caused the “fairly routine religious ceremony” to be blown out of proportion. The ritual must be understood in the context of the Kenyan pastor and the Pentecostal church. Although he does a thorough job of explaining the misunderstanding of Palin’s religion, his argument would benefit from relevant historical parallels.
William Martin’s description of Kennedy’s 1960 campaign shows that the tactic (or strategy?) of turning religion into a liability is at least a few decades older than Sarah Palin and Barack Obama’s campaigns. Voters were suspect of Kennedy back then, largely due to their misunderstanding of Catholicism. Innuendo and suspicions about what a Catholic President would mean for the country included the fear that Kennedy would kiss a “Cardinal’s ring as an act of obeisance to Roman Catholic temporal authority” (Martin, 51). Most people today know that generally Catholics do not bow to the Pope’s every demand, but back then Catholicism was poorly understood, and this fits in well with Barr’s argument about the Kenyan pastor in the Pentecostal Church. Religion in politics is a double-edged sword; without it candidates are defenseless to attacks on their values and morals, but it can them cut just as deep if they allow it to be twisted back against them.
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What I find most interesting about the links that have been made between JFK and Palin or JFK and Obama, by journalists and bloggers alike, is that Kennedy worked to relegate his religion to the private sphere of his personal life. His declaration,"I believe the founding fathers meant it when they provided in Article VI of the Constitution that there should be no religious test for public office," though it may have helped win him win an election, has obviously still not been taken to heart by voters or the media, as Barr's article suggests. Aside from that observation, I would also like to mention that most mainstream evangelicals make a distinction between themselves and Pentecostals. the Pentecostal Church is a bit less mainstream, and a good deal more radical, than Catholicism was in Kennedy's day. From my limited knowledge--feel free to correct me if I am mistaken--Pentecostal churches tend to be charismatic, which means they employ prophecy, healings, and speaking in tongues. I think there for many Americans, religious or not, there is a level of discomfort with these characteristics that may be more warranted than fears that Kennedy would serve the Pope.
This article written by Perry H. provides an interesting look into what some may call America’s fascination with religion. Voters tend to scrutinize every political candidate from what some consider serious issues, to less important issues. These less important issues lead to the example of Hillary Clinton wearing a low-cut shirt at one of her speaking events. How important is her shirt of choice? I think it is on a lower level of importance than say religion.
Perry H. provides nicely illustrated examples of how Kennedy’s Catholicism and Palin’s once-Pentecostal beliefs catch the attention of the public. I believe that an individual’s religion is a very important factor in the race for the White House for both the president and the vice president. This is because Americans want to know how the country will have issues dealt with. Will a president base his or her decisions off of the Constitution, or the Bible? If it is the Bible, they have lost my vote.
I was never very interested in the video of Gov. Palin participating in the blessing. While I was initially intrigued and then confused about the nature of the ceremony, it appears to be nothing more than another online video taken out of context. The pastor is from Kenya where the term "witchcraft" carries less of a stigma than it does here. Secondly, as one commentator cited in the article notes, this is not an unusual ceremony for a Pentacostal service. The buzz surrounding the video had less to do with Palin's religion than it did with the fairly shocking nature of the video when viewed without contextual understanding.
I also strongly believe that if this sort of video were to have come out showing a democrat, or liberal politician, the media attention would have been far more intense. This is because the religious right would have jumped all over a democrat for participating in a perceived radical religious ceremony (ie. Obama and Rev. Wright). Fortunately for Palin, the religious right is on her side. It's an obvious double-standard.
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