Sarah Palin and Her Dominionist Connection: This is Scary Stuff Folks

I recently received some information about Sarah Palin and her religious affiliation that disturbs me. Read on from a report from Global Research by F. William Engdahl. Below are excerpts:

Sarah Palin has spent more than two and a half decades of her life as a member of an Alaska church which is part of a fanatical Christian-named cult project that is sweeping across America. Palin comes out of the most radical stream of US Born-Again Evangelism known as ‘Joel's Army,' an offshoot of what is called Dominionism and sometimes also called the Latter Rain cult or Manifest Sons of God. The movement deliberately attempts to remain below the radar screen.

Until 2002 according to their own website, Palin was a member of Wasilla Assembly of God with Senior Pastor Ed Kalnins. Online video clips of Palin speaking from the pulpit of this church are revealing. Curiously, between the time this article was begun on September 9^th and the 11^th, the video was removed without explanation:

(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20712.htm.).

As one researcher familiar with the history of the Third Wave Movement or Dominionism describes, ‘The Third Wave is a revival of the theology of the Latter Rain tent revivals of the 1950s and 1960s led by William Branham and others. It is based on the idea that in the end times there will be an outpouring of supernatural powers on a group of Christians that will take authority over the existing church and the world. The believing Christians of the world will be reorganized under the Fivefold Ministry and the church restructured under the authority of Prophets and Apostles and others anointed by God. The young generation will form ‘Joel's Army' to rise up and battle evil and retake the earth for God.'4

The excesses of this movement were declared a heresy in 1949 by the General Council of the Assemblies of God, and again condemned through Resolution 16 in 2000.

Sarah H. Leslie, a former Christian Right leader, describes the ideology of Dominionism:

‘The Gospel of Salvation is achieved by setting up the ‘Kingdom of God' as a literal and physical kingdom to be ‘advanced' on Earth in the present age. Some dominionists liken the New Testament Kingdom to the Old Testament Israel in ways that justify taking up the sword, or other methods of punitive judgment, to war against enemies of their kingdom.

Leslie quotes from Al Dager's Vengeance Is Ours: The Church In Dominion: ‘Dominion theology is predicated upon three basic beliefs: 1) Satan usurped man's dominion over the earth through the temptation of Adam and Eve; 2) The Church is God's instrument to take dominion back from Satan; 3) Jesus cannot or will not return until the Church has taken dominion by gaining control of the earth's governmental and social institutions.'6

Sarah Leslie pinpoints to the central deception behind the current spread of Dominionism among various Protestant denominations across America today:

‘Dominion theology is a heresy. As such it is rarely presented as openly as the definitions above may indicate. Outside of the Reconstructionist camp, evangelical dominionism has wrapped itself in slick packages - one piece at a time - for mass-media consumption. This has been a slow process, taking several decades. Few evangelicals would recognize the word ‘dominionism' or know what it means. This is because other terminologies have been developed which soft-sell dominionism, concealing the full scope of the agenda. Many evangelicals (and even their more conservative counterparts, the fundamentalists) may adhere to tidbits of dominionism without recognizing the error...

‘To most effectively propagate their agenda, dominionist leaders first developed new ecclesiologies, eschatologies and soteriologies for targeted audiences along the major denominational fault lines of evangelical Christianity. Then the 1990s Promise Keepers men's movement was used as a vehicle to ‘break down the walls', i.e., cross denominational barriers for the purpose of exporting dominionism to the wider evangelical subculture. This strategy was so effective that it reached into the mainline Protestant denominations. Dominionists have carefully selected leaders to be trained as ‘change agents' for ‘transformation' (dominion) in an erudite manner that belies the media stereotype of southern-talking, Bible-thumping, fundamentalist half-wits.'7

All evidence suggests Palin was carefully selected by the leadership of the Bush-Cheney-McCain Republican party to galvanize the Party's activist Evangelical base, something McCain had been unable to do.

Some theological and political background to the Joel's Army or Third Wave movement as it is also known, is instructive. It teaches a radical fundamentalist creed that its adherents must actively engage in politics, to become what they term, ‘soldiers in God's Army.'

Joel's Army believers are hard-core Christian ‘dominionists,' meaning they believe that America, along with the rest of the world, should be governed by conservative Christians and a conservative Christian interpretation of biblical law. There is no room in their doctrine for democracy or pluralism. To paraphrase George W. Bush, ‘You're either with us or you are against us.'

(If you want to read more, here is a link. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10167  You can also google "dominionism" and find more.)