Baptist minister Howard Bess, who wrote a book Palin wanted banned and who fought her on abortion and gay rights, says the country should fear her election.
By David Talbot
Sept. 15, 2008 | WASILLA, Alaska -- The Wasilla Assembly of God, the evangelical church where Sarah Palin came of age, was still charged with excitement on Sunday over Palin's sudden ascendance. Pastor Ed Kalnins warned his congregation not to talk with any journalists who might have been lurking in the pews -- and directly warned this reporter not to interview any of his flock. But Kalnins and other speakers at the service reveled in Palin's rise to global stardom.
It confirmed, they said, that God was making use of Wasilla. "She will take our message to the world!" rejoiced an Assembly of God youth ministry leader, as the church band rocked the high-vaulted wooden building with its electric gospel.
That is what scares the Rev. Howard Bess. A retired American Baptist minister who pastors a small congregation in nearby Palmer, Wasilla's twin town in Alaska's Matanuska Valley, Bess has been tangling with Palin and her fellow evangelical activists ever since she was a Wasilla City Council member in the 1990s. Recently, Bess again found himself in the spotlight with Palin, when it was reported that his 1995 book, "Pastor, I Am Gay," was among those Palin tried to have removed from the Wasilla Public Library when she was mayor.
She scares me," said Bess. "She's Jerry Falwell with a pretty face.
"At this point, people in this country don't grasp what this person is all about. The key to understanding Sarah Palin is understanding her radical theology."
Bess -- a fit-looking, 80-year-old man in a gray University of Illinois sweatshirt and blue jeans - spoke with me over coffee at the Vagabond Blues, a cafe in Palmer with a stunning view of the nearby snow-capped Chugach Mountains. The retired minister moved to the Mat-Su Valley with his wife, Darlene, in 1987, after his outspoken defense of gay rights at Baptist churches in the Santa Barbara, Calif., area and Anchorage landed him in trouble with church officials. In the Mat-Su Valley, Bess plunged into community activism, helping launch an assortment of projects, from an arts council to a shelter for the mentally disabled.
Inevitably, his work brought him into conflict with Palin and other highly politicized Christian fundamentalists in the valley. "Things got very intense around here in the '90s -- the culture war was very hot here," Bess said. "The evangelicals were trying to take over the valley. They took over the school board, the community hospital board, even the local electric utility. And Sarah Palin was in the direct center of all these culture battles, along with the churches she belonged to."
Bess' first run-in with Palin's religious forces came when he decided to write his book, "Pastor, I Am Gay." The book was the result of a theological journey that began in the 1970s when Bess was asked for guidance by a closeted homosexual in his Santa Barbara congregation. After deep reflection on the subject, Bess came to the conclusion that "gay people were not sick, nor were they special sinners."
In his book, Bess suggests that gays have a divine mission. "Look back at the life of our Lord Jesus. He was misunderstood, deserted, unjustly accused, and cruelly killed. Yet we all confess that it was the will of God, for by his wounds we are healed ... Could it be that the homosexual, obedient to the will of God, might be the church's modern day healer-messiah?"
When it was published in 1995, Bess' book caused an immediate storm in the Mat-Su Valley, an evangelical stronghold dotted with storefront churches. Conservative ministers targeted the book, and the only bookstore in the valley that dared to stock it -- Shalom Christian Books and Gifts - soon dropped it after the owner was barraged with angry phone calls. The Frontiersman, the local newspaper that ran a column by Bess for seven years, fired him and ran a vicious cartoon that suggested even drooling child molesters would be welcomed by Bess' church.
And after she became mayor of Wasilla, according to Bess, Sarah Palin tried to get rid of his book from the local library. Palin now denies that she wanted to censor library books, but Bess insists that his book was on a "hit list" targeted by Palin. "I'm as certain of that as I am that I'm sitting here. This is a small town, we all know each other. People in city government have confirmed to me what Sarah was trying to do."
Soon after the book controversy, Bess found himself again at odds with Palin and her fellow evangelicals. In 1996, evangelical churches mounted a vigorous campaign to take over the local hospital's community board and ban abortion from the valley. When they succeeded, Bess and Dr. Susan Lemagie, a Palmer OB-GYN, fought back, filing suit on behalf of a local woman who had been forced to travel to Seattle for an abortion. The case was finally decided by the Alaska Supreme Court, which ruled that the hospital must provide valley women with the abortion option.
At one point during the hospital battle, passions ran so hot that local antiabortion activists organized a boisterous picket line outside Dr. Lemagie's office, in an unassuming professional building across from Palmer's Little League field. According to Bess and another community activist, among the protesters trying to disrupt the physician's practice that day was Sarah Palin.
Another valley activist, Philip Munger, says that Palin also helped push the evangelical drive to take over the Mat-Su Borough school board. "She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the board," said Munger, a music composer and teacher. "I bumped into her once after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God. I said, 'Sarah, how can you believe in creationism -- your father's a science teacher.' And she said, 'We don't have to agree on everything.'
"I pushed her on the earth's creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she'd seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them."
Munger also asked Palin if she truly believed in the End of Days, the doomsday scenario when the Messiah will return. "She looked in my eyes and said, 'Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime.'"
Bess is unnerved by the prospect of Palin -- a woman whose mind is given to dogmatic certitude -- standing one step away from the Oval Office. "It's truly frightening that someone like Sarah has risen to the national level," Bess said. "Like all religious fundamentalists -- Christian, Jewish, Muslim -- she is a dualist. They view life as an ongoing struggle to the finish between good and evil. Their mind-set is that you do not do business with evil -- you destroy it. Talking with the enemy is not part of their plan. That puts someone like Obama on the side of evil.
"Forget all this chatter about whether or not she knows what the Bush doctrine is. That's trivial. The real disturbing thing about Sarah is her mind-set. It's her underlying belief system that will influence how she responds in an international crisis, if she's ever in that position, and has the full might of the U.S. military in her hands. She gave some indication of that thinking in her ABC interview, when she suggested how willing she would be to go to war with Russia.
"Alaskans liked that certitude when she was dealing with corrupt politicians and the oil industry -- and there is something admirable about it. But when you're dealing with a complex and dangerous world as commander in chief, that's a different story."
Bess said that he and fellow valley residents have long been charmed by the Sarah Palin who is now dazzling the American public. Despite their strong political differences, "she always has a warm greeting for me when we bump into each other. She's the most charming person you'll ever know."
"But," Bess adds, "this person's election would be a disaster for the country and the world."
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Comments: 37
Oh right, I'm not supposed to think, I'm just supposed to go vote for her because she's a woman. I just don't get how one person can think so differently than I do on so many topics, I really didn't think it was possible to agree with someone less than I agree with Bush, but she's proved me wrong yet again.
All the more reason we need to get the word out. Thanks for sharing!
I've met FEW Pastors capable of "leading" their own Families...Liberalism is insidious.
My 15 yo daughter can see that she is dangerous woman.
She's associated with the pseudo-christian end-times [warmongering] cults known as Dominionism, Joel's Army, and the Latter Rain.
Those who think she's a Christian are opening themselves to tremendous confusion. The pseudo-christians twist everything to make it fit into the plans for a world-wide armageddon which, they believe, will end in their ascendancy as a theocracy.
Sarah's not actually running for vice-president of the U.S.A., she's heading up a huge push from a surprising large network of armageddonists, to get their planet-wide war going. That, they believe, is the only way they'll get to "see Jesus" - when they bring about the "end times."
Date published: 9/22/2008
SOME CRITICS of Sarah Palin worry, not irrationally, that her lack of overseas experience could come to haunt the United States if she were elected vice president. Other critics--X-rays would show ominous masses of meanness where perhaps minds once were--have attacked her religion. Yet there is a sense in which the Alaska governor's faith journey bolsters her ability to relate to foreigners.
Not the crown heads of Europe or the P.M.s of the G8 or their constituents, but many millions of residents of the Third World who share Mrs. Palin's formative faith, Pentecostalism, and her general world view. By 2050, writes Penn State's Philip Jenkins in "The Next Christendom," the number of Pentecostals--Christians who believe in the direct visitation of the Holy Spirit to receptive believers, with superanimated results--are on course worldwide to surpass 1 billion. Tuned into Pentecostal sects such as Church of God With Signs Following and Fire-Baptized Holiness Church of God of the Americas and at home with worshipers at the First Primitive Pentecostal Church, a Vice President Palin probably would be unique among First World leaders in her ability to approach this tidal social movement--growing, especially in Africa and South America, at an estimated 19 million members per year--without sheer puzzlement or a reflex to condescend.
Of course, Mrs. Palin, whose family for the last six years has attended an evangelical Bible church, wouldn't be the only American to enjoy broad theo-cultural overlap with Third World Pentecostals. Conservative Christians in the United States as a whole share that comity. Writes Mr. Jenkins:
"At present, Southern [Hemisphere] Christians are far more conservative in terms of both beliefs and moral teaching. The denominations that are triumphing all across the global South are stalwartly traditional or even reactionary by the standards of the economically advanced nations. Within a few decades, such denominations will represent a far larger segment of global Christianity, just conceivably a majority. These newer churches preach deep personal faith and communal orthodoxy, mysticism and puritanism, all founded on clear scriptural authority. In this thought-world, prophecy is an everyday reality, while faith-healing, exorcism, and dream-visions are basic components of religious sensibility
Just about fainted after this...then one more page
Date published: 9/22/2008
continued
Liberal Protestants such as Barack Obama would find little common religious ground with these Southern believers, just as Third World Roman Catholics might wonder how a Joe Biden could tout his Catholicism while playing bodyguard to Roe v. Wade. The Religious Right, including Mrs. Palin, is much more simpatico with this emerging, orthodox global Christianity, which is likely to acquire turbocharged geopolitical power in places with no tradition of church-state separation.
This inter-"world" compatibility is evident in myriad ways. When the Episcopal Church's ordination of an openly gay bishop prompted several Episcopal parishes to leave the American church, where in the Anglican Communion did they light? Several affiliated with the Anglican Church of Nigeria, while the entire Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin (Calif.) joined the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone of America, which covers Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
Or consider the war against HIV/AIDS, plague of the Third World, scourge of Africa. Launched in 2003 by President Bush, an evangelical Methodist, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief will have devoted $18.8 billion to fighting global AIDS by the time Mr. Bush leaves office. This is the largest international health initiative in history dedicated by one nation to combat a single disease, representing more than the total spent on global AIDS by the entire rest of the world. No religious community has more zealously backed the plan than Christian evangelicals, 150 of whose leaders personally lobbied Capitol Hill for full funding of Mr. Bush's crusade.
Conservatives, historically averse to foreign aid, are unexpectedly forging alliances with developing-world communities--and this is nowhere more true than in conservatism's religious wing. While both political parties and the State Department are stocked with advisers and experts on matters Euro-, Sino-, and Russo-, mavens who could backstop a president relatively unschooled about those regions, Sarah Palin herself would bring a politically rare understanding of the fastest-growing mass movement on the planet. As that force grows, hateful secularists who mock Mrs. Palin's faith may turn out to be the true primitives.
The editorial about Palin religious benefit to a global community in 9/22 2008, was at best deranged and misleading.
This country was not founded with the intention to be a church state, in fact quite the contrary, reason we have freedom of religion.
I was introduce in the bill of rights specifically to keep warring factions of the time from becoming a supreme church in America.
We have survived the past 200 plus years as a nation because of the freedom...from religion and potentially becoming another quasi Muslim nation of a different breed. It is important at this time in our history that the purpose of the church, any church is to provide a spiritual comfort and moral balance in the world.
This is an entirely personal experience that each must pursue.Palin religion is not a christian denomination ,it is a radical extremist view and interpretation of the scriptures , more resembling a cult.
The true believer does not require neither a church nor a following, as warned by Christ himself, do not follow false prophets...many will come in my name but they are of the devil.
It would be damaging for our nation and our faith to elect any leader who believes to have been chosen by God to occupy their high position in government.
It is clearly a sign of mental instability or fanaticism to believe such a thing.
Palin and her beliefs should be a very good reason to disqualify her as a candidate for any government position.
It is the 21st century and with her in government the inquisition is just around the corner.
All americans of faith or otherwise should take notice and be very afraid of the infringement on the constitution and possible loss of our civil rights with such fanatics in charge of our government.
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