The 2004 video, which began airing on the Internet last week, shows Kenyan Bishop Thomas Muthee calling Palin to the front of a church to lay hands on her and pray to keep her safe from “every form of witchcraft.”

“Make her way, my God. Bring finances her way even for the campaign in the name of Jesus...Use her to turn this nation the other way around,” Muthee said while placing his hands upon Palin. “Talk to God about this woman. We declare, save her from Satan.”

The “witchcraft” line in particular caught the attention of liberal pundits and bloggers. Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC’s “Countdown,” called the video “terrifying” and said it made the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the much-criticized ex-pastor of Barack Obama, look “pretty mainstream” in comparison.

But religious experts said there was nothing untoward in the video, which they said shows a fairly routine religious ceremony. Misunderstanding over it has grown because of the McCain campaign’s refusal to comment on the video, suggesting that the campaign was on uncomfortable footing with Palin’s religion, the experts said.

Jacob K. Olupana, a religion professor at Harvard, said the campaign appears to have been caught flat- footed when trying to answer questions on Palin’s faith. “I’m not sure they understand it,” he said.

“What you saw was something very basic that happens in a Pentecostal church,” said Anthea Butler, a religion professor at the University of Rochester. “You would see this in any Pentecostal church on any given Sunday.”

But while the practice may not have been unusual for Palin’s faith, the McCain campaign did not push back very hard against media’s coverage of the video, which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube and got prime placement on top liberal blogs, including The Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo. Instead, the campaign has highlighted Palin’s “nondenominational evangelical” beliefs, while rarely mentioning her many years in a Pentecostal church.

“Why can’t the campaign articulate what she is about?” Butler asked. “I don’t think they knew,” she said, or else they were “trying to mask” Palin’s true views.

The McCain campaign has not addressed Muthee or his blessing of Palin and declined to comment on the video for this story.

To see more videos on Palin's church click here. If you’re in the deciphering mode that is!

When asked about the Alaska governor’s religious background, the McCain campaign said in an e-mail that Palin was baptized in a Catholic church as an infant, was a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in High School, and has been a member of the Wasilla Bible Church — “a nondenominational, evangelical church” — for the last seven years.

The Alaska governor’s religion gets no mention in her biography on the campaign’s website; campaign officials say that she does not consider herself to be a Pentecostal.

As a teenager, Palin joined the Wasilla Assembly of God, a Pentecostal church in Wasilla. She was baptized in the church and, along with her husband and children, attended the church until 2002. Since then, the Palins have attended the Wasilla Bible Church, an Evangelical church.

Butler said that at the Pentecostal baptism, Palin likely would have been expected to speak in tongues. Some members of the Wasilla Assembly of God reportedly do speak in tongues as part of their practice, though officials from Palin’s campaign and the church both say she did not.

In a statement on its website, Pain’s former church notes that she “has maintained a friendship with Wasilla Assembly of God and has attended various conferences and special meetings here.”

It was during one of those appearances in June that Palin called the Iraq war “a task that is from God.”

During that same appearance, Palin credited Bishop Muthee’s prayers for her becoming governor.

“As I was mayor and Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me,” Palin said. “He said, 'Lord, make a way and let her do this next step.' And that's exactly what happened.”

Some of Muthee’s beliefs come from his experiences in Kenya, where he and wife, Margaret, founded a church in a violent area on the outskirts of Nairobi in 1988.

According to a 1999 Christian Science Monitor article, Muthee decided that witchcraft, specifically a spirit inhabiting a local woman named “Mama Jane,” was responsible for much of the turmoil in the area. To rid the community of the “demonic influence” of “Mama Jane,” Muthee set up a church in the basement of a grocery store where 200 people prayed in round-the-clock shifts. Under growing pressure from the Bishop, the woman eventually left town.

“Witchcraft is a sad reality in many parts of Africa, resulting in scores of deaths in Kenya over the past two decades,” Catholic League President Bill Donohue said in a statement that chastised the media for its coverage of the video.

“Bishop Muthee’s blessing, then, was simply a reflection of his cultural understanding of evil. While others are not obliged to accept his interpretation, all can be expected to respect it. More than that, Muthee should be hailed for asking God to shield Palin from harmful forces, however they may be manifested,” Donohue’s statement said. “And for this he is mocked and Palin ridiculed?”

“I don’t know why they are making a big thing out of it,” Olupana said of the media reaction to the video. “Witchcraft as part of a belief system is real to the people who live there,” he said, noting that there was “nothing unusual about what happened.”

The religion professor noted that when Obama came under fire for his ties to Wright, several black religious leaders stepped out from behind the pew to explain their faith and put the reverend’s remarks in context.

But with Palin’s tie to Muthee, he said, “no one has stepped up to explain this.”

Source: Politico

The general rule of thumb in Alaska is NEVER disagree with Governor Sarah Palin on anything or you are very likely to incur her wrath.  Yet if you are an old school chum who's also a Sarah ‘cheerleader,' even with limited job qualifications you can probably expect to be rewarded with a high paid governmental position.  In an extensive article by Jo Becker, Peter S. Goodman and Michael Powell, published on September 13, 2008 in the New York Times, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's propensity for pursuing personal vendettas and handsomely rewarding unqualified underlings is comprehensively examined.

Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

An examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics - she sometimes calls local opponents "haters" - contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney's firing.

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process.

When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages - through a federal records request - he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.

"Their secrecy is off the charts," Mr. Steiner said.

Last summer State Representative John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Mr. Palin's voice. The governor's husband sounded edgy. He said he was unhappy that Mr. Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff, the speaker recalled. Mr. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Ms. Palin. But she fired Mr. Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend.

"I understood from the call that Todd wasn't happy with me hiring John and he'd like to see him not there," Mr. Harris said.

"The Palin family gets upset at personal issues," he added. "And at our level, they want to strike back."

Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin's first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.

"I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,' " Ms. Chase recalled. "She replied, ‘I want to be president.' "

Ms. Palin grew up in Wasilla, an old fur trader's outpost and now a fast-growing exurb of Anchorage. The town sits in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, edged by jagged mountains and birch forests. In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration took farmers from the Dust Bowl area and resettled them here; their Democratic allegiances defined the valley for half a century.

In the past three decades, socially conservative Oklahomans and Texans have flocked north to the oil fields of Alaska. They filled evangelical churches around Wasilla and revived the Republican Party.  Many of these working-class residents formed the electoral backbone for Ms. Palin, who ran for mayor on a platform of gun rights, opposition to abortion and the ouster of the "complacent" old guard.

After winning the mayoral election in 1996, Ms. Palin presided over a city rapidly outgrowing itself. Septic tanks had begun to pollute lakes, and residential lots were carved willy-nilly out of the woods. She passed road and sewer bonds, cut property taxes but raised the sales tax.

But careers were turned upside down. The mayor quickly fired the town's museum director, John Cooper. Later, she sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. "He told us they only wanted two," recalled Esther West, one of the three, "and we had to pick who was going to be laid off." The three quit as one.

Ms. Palin cited budget difficulties for the museum cuts. Mr. Cooper thought differently, saying the museum had become a microcosm of class and cultural conflicts in town. "It represented that the town was becoming more progressive, and they didn't want that," he said.

Days later, Mr. Cooper recalled, a vocal conservative, Steve Stoll, sidled up to him. Mr. Stoll had supported Ms. Palin and had a long-running feud with Mr. Cooper. "He said: ‘Gotcha, Cooper,' " Mr. Cooper said.

In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.

Your attorney, Mr. Showers told Ms. Palin, is costing me lots of money.

"She told me she'd like to see him fired," Mr. Showers recalled. "But she couldn't do it herself because the City Council hires the city attorney." Ms. Palin told him to write the council members to complain.

Meanwhile, Ms. Palin pushed the issue from the inside. "She started the ball rolling," said Ms. Patrick, who also favored the firing. Mr. Deuser was soon replaced by Ken Jacobus, then the State Republican Party's general counsel.

"Professionals were either forced out or fired," Mr. Deuser said.

Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor's use - employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.

The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

"People would bring books back censored," recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin's predecessor. "Pages would get marked up or torn out."

Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book "Daddy's Roommate" on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

"Sarah said she didn't need to read that stuff," Ms. Chase said. "It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn't even read it."

Restless ambition defined Ms. Palin in the early years of this decade. She raised money for Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from the state; finished second in the 2002 Republican primary for lieutenant governor; and sought to fill the seat of Senator Frank H. Murkowski when he ran for governor.

Mr. Murkowski appointed his daughter to the seat, but as a consolation prize, he gave Ms. Palin the $125,000-a-year chairmanship of a state commission overseeing oil and gas drilling.

Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.

The Republican establishment shunned her. But her break with the gentlemen's club of oil producers and political power catapulted her into the public eye.

Ms. Palin entered the 2006 primary for governor as a formidable candidate.

In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor's office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter's guile.

"I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did," Mr. Jenkins recalled. "And she said, ‘Yeah, what I did was wrong.' "

Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.

Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was "smearing" her. "Now I look at her and think: ‘Man, you're slick,' " he said.

Ms. Palin won the primary, and in the general election she faced Tony Knowles, the former two-term Democratic governor, and Andrew Halcro, an independent.

Not deeply versed in policy, Ms. Palin skipped some candidate forums; at others, she flipped through hand-written, color-coded index cards strategically placed behind her nameplate.

Before one forum, Mr. Halcro said he saw aides shovel reports at Ms. Palin as she crammed. Her showman's instincts rarely failed. She put the pile of reports on the lectern. Asked what she would do about health care policy, she patted the stack and said she would find an answer in the pile of solutions.

Half a century after Alaska became a state, Ms. Palin was inaugurated as governor in Fairbanks and took up the reformer's sword.

As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.

Mr. Parnell, the lieutenant governor, praised Ms. Palin's appointments. "The people she hires are competent, qualified, top-notch people," he said.

Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: "Who?" Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.

"I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?' " said a family friend, Kathy Wells. "He said, ‘No, but I think I'll get some help.' "

The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.

While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a "personal device" like a BlackBerry "would be confidential and not subject to subpoena."

Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account "when there was significant state business."

On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin's state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: "Frank, this is not the governor's personal account."

Mr. Bailey responded: "Whoops~!"

Mr. Bailey, a former midlevel manager at Alaska Airlines who worked on Ms. Palin's campaign, has been placed on paid leave; he has emerged as a central figure in the trooper investigation.

Another confidante of Ms. Palin's is Ms. Frye, 27. She worked as a receptionist for State Senator Lyda Green before she joined Ms. Palin's campaign for governor. Now Ms. Frye earns $68,664 as a special assistant to the governor. Her frequent interactions with Ms. Palin's children have prompted some lawmakers to refer to her as "the babysitter," a title that Ms. Frye disavows.

Like Mr. Bailey, she is an effusive cheerleader for her boss.

"YOU ARE SO AWESOME!" Ms. Frye typed in an e-mail message to Ms. Palin in March.

Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor's mansion in Juneau, records show.

During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing "Where's Sarah?" pins.

Many politicians say they typically learn of her initiatives - and vetoes - from news releases.

Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored, records and interviews show.

Last summer, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, a Democrat, pressed Ms. Palin to meet with him because the state had failed to deliver money needed to operate city traffic lights. At one point, records show, state officials told him to just turn off a dozen of them. Ms. Palin agreed to meet with Mr. Begich when he threatened to go public with his anger, according to city officials.

At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor's remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.

The administration's e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.

Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a "hater."

It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as "bad people who are anti-Alaska."

As Ms. Palin's star ascends, the McCain campaign, as often happens in national races, is controlling the words of those who know her well. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, has been asked not to speak to reporters, and aides sit in on interviews with old friends.

At a recent lunch gathering, an official with the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce asked its members to refer all calls from reporters to the governor's office. Dianne Woodruff, a city councilwoman, shook her head.

"I was thinking, I don't remember giving up my First Amendment rights," Ms. Woodruff said. "Just because you're not going gaga over Sarah doesn't mean you can't speak your mind."

Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes

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."

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 they were special sinners."

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."  

The Pastor Who Clashed with Palin

Part 2 of the comprehensive article by journalist David Talbot published online September 15, 2008 by Salon.com …  ~ Sarah Palin Truth Squad

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.

Munger 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.

Sarah Palin: 10 things we've learnt

It has been a week since Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was catapulted from relative obscurity to center stage as US Republican John McCain's choice for running mate. Here are 10 things we now know about her.

Images of Sarah Palin, past and present

1. Her five children are named Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and, last but not least, Trig Paxson Van Palin. According to the Washington Post newspaper, Track was named after the course of the sockeye salmon the family fishes off the town of Dillingham, while her eldest daughter's name comes from Bristol Bay, an area known for its salmon fisheries. The name Willow relates to the state bird, the willow ptarmigan, and a nearby town, the paper says, while daughter Piper shares her name with the family's small plane. Trig is the Norse word for "brave victory", the Post adds.

2. Her rimless glasses are now a style phenomenon. The titanium Kawasaki 704 frames - designed in Japan, where they sell for $300 - are apparently flying off the shelves. Her upswept hair-do is also reportedly spawning imitators. LA Times fashion writer Booth Moore writes: "The untidiness of her updo has a can-do spirit that says, 'I have more important things to do than worry about my hair, so I just twirled it into this clip so I could get to the real business of governing and shooting caribou and having babies and taking them to hockey practice.'"

3. John McCain picked someone who not only appeals to "Wal-Mart Moms" but is one herself, shopping for the family in a local branch. Not only that, writes New York Times columnist William Kristol, but "he picked someone who, in 1999 as Wasilla mayor, presided over a wedding of two Wal-Mart associates at the local Wal-Mart".

4. Mrs Palin enjoys moose-hunting and salmon-fishing - and has said her favorite dish is moose stew. Former Republican senator and one-time presidential hopeful Fred Thompson described her as "the only nominee in the history of either party who knows how to properly field-dress a moose". Cindy McCain, in her speech to the party's national convention, said her husband John had "picked a reform-minded, hockey-mommin', basketball-shooting, moose-hunting, salmon-fishing, pistol-packing mother-of-five for vice-president".

5. A month before her fifth child, Trig, was due, Mrs Palin's waters broke while she was in Texas to address a conference. She delivered her speech nonetheless and embarked on the long flight back to Alaska - changing planes in Seattle - before traveling an hour by road to hospital to give birth. She says she was not in "active labor" and her doctor said it was fine. Alaska Airlines allows women to travel in the late stages of pregnancy. Husband Todd - a commercial fisherman - is quoted by the s Anchorage Daily Newas saying: "You can't have a fish picker from Texas." Three days later, Mrs Palin was back at work.

6. As governor of Alaska, Mrs Palin ditched plans for a "bridge to nowhere" - a federally-funded project to link a handful of Alaskans to an airport at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. In her speech to the Republican National Convention, she said she had told the US Congress "thanks, but no thanks". But US media say she appeared to support the project while running for governor in 2006, though she said the proposed design was too "grandiose". And when she announced the cancellation of the bridge a year ago - after it gained notoriety as an example of wasteful spending - she hardly seemed to be turning down federal funds out of thrift. She explained the decision by saying, "It's clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island." The federal funding was diverted to other projects in Alaska.

Mrs Palin enjoys hunting, shooting and fishing for salmon

7. In a line that has gone down well at the Republican National Convention and on the campaign trail, she boasts of putting the previous governor's "luxury jet" on eBay as a measure to cut wasteful spending. That is true. But what she has not always explained to her audience is that the plane failed to sell on the internet auction site and so aides had to broker a deal with a buyer.

8. She was baptised a Catholic as an infant but attended a Pentecostal church in Wasilla - her hometown since her parents moved to Alaska from Idaho when she was three months old - for many years. She now attends Wasilla Bible Church, a non-denominational, evangelical church. The Associated Press reports that the church is promoting a conference that promises to convert gays into heterosexuals through the power of prayer.

9. As hunters sometimes do, Mrs Palin has incurred the wrath of wildlife-lovers. It's not just that she shoots moose and caribou, she has also backed legislation to encourage the aerial hunting of wolves, as a "predator control" measure. Plus, she has opposed the US government's listing of a variety of animals as endangered, including the polar bear and the beluga whale. Unlike Mr McCain and to the horror of many environmentalists, she actively supports drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

10. She is a self-described "average hockey mom"; a biography published a few months ago was entitled Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment on Its Ear. The hockey mom branding could prove useful come November in the swing states of Michigan and Minnesota, where ice hockey is a big game. Her best-known joke so far? "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick."

In June, Sarah Palin took the stage at the Wasilla Assembly of God, a deeply conservative Pentecostal church. The excitable Alaskan governor told a graduating class of missionary students that it "was so cool growing up in this church, getting saved here, getting baptized." She went on to declare that her son Track will deploy to Iraq, and urged students to pray "that our leaders, that our national leaders, are sending [soldiers] out on a task that is from God." She added: "That's what we have to make sure that we are praying for -- that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

One big question about Palin is how that deterministic view of God's will in world affairs influences her decision-making on issues ranging from the Middle East to the environment, sexuality to education. What is not in doubt is that her addition to the Republican ticket has fired up the religious right and the party's most conservative base.

The McCain campaign has downplayed Palin's Pentecostal roots. But as her testimony at the Wasilla Assembly of God demonstrates, she is motivated by the idea that godly forces are locked in spiritual warfare with satanic forces. For many with a Pentecostal upbringing like Palin's, fighting that battle is part of God's plan for the end of days, when war will end the world as we know it, Jesus will come back, and non-Christians will convert or perish.

Where She Was Saved: The Church Where Sarah Palin Grew Up and Was Baptized Preaches Some of the Most Extreme Religious Views in the Nation

A Visit to Palin’s Church: Scripture and discretion on the program in Wasilla.

It is whether you like it or not a sign from GOD punishing these so called men of GOD. He exposes them to the light for all the world to see. It should server as a warning to others that if you ARE a man of GOD you damn well better be a MAN OF GOD!

You don't condemn others and their practices while you yourself (these men who claim to be MEN of GOD) commit said same acts. I find it refreshing that the Evangelical Church who thinks themselves oh so better than (others) thou are getting WHACKED as hard as they are. So let's take a short walk down memory lane shall we?

Jimmy Swaggert: Sexual acts with a female prostitue

Jim Bakker: Sex scandal & accounting fraud

Ted Haggard: Sexual acts with a male prostitute and  doing illegal drugs

Todd Bentley: Well umm, you'll have to Google him he's so umm, well you'll see

AND NOW MY FAVORITE:

Michael Guglimucci: Dying of Terminal Bone Cancer, Fraud, Attempt to Fraud, Lies, the list goes on and on, let's recap Michael shall we...

The problem is the pastor wasn’t dying at all !

Michael Guglielmucci, who inspired hundreds of thousands of young Christians with his terminal cancer “battle”, has been exposed as a fraud.

Guglielmucci, whose parents established Edge Church International, an Assemblies of God church at O’Halloran Hill in Adelaide’s southern suburbs, now is seeking professional help.

Earlier this year, Mr Guglielmucci released a hit song, Healer , which was featured on Sydney church Hillsong’s latest album.

The song debuted at No. 2 on the ARIA charts.

It since has become an anthem of faith for believers, many of whom are suffering their own illness and were praying for a miracle for Mr Guglielmucci, who has claimed for two years to be terminally ill.

In one church performance that has attracted 300,000 hits on YouTube, he performs his hit song with an oxygen tube in his nose.

It appears Mr Guglielmucci, who was a pastor with one of Australia’s biggest youth churches, Planetshakers, may even have deceived his own family.

“This news has come as a great shock to everyone including, it seems, his own wife and family,” Hillsong general manager George Aghajanian said in an email to his congregation yesterday.

“Michael has confirmed that he is not suffering with a terminal illness and is seeking professional help in Adelaide with the support of his family. We are asking our church to pray for the Guglielmucci family during this difficult time.”

The Advertiser was told last night Mr Guglielmucci may release a statement on the situation.

The Australian Christian Church said Mr Guglielmucci’s credentials immediately were suspended once he told the national executive that his cancer claims were “untrue”.

“The national executive is taking this matter very seriously and is awaiting the results of medical tests before determining the full extent of the discipline that will be imposed upon him,” vice president Alun Davies said.

“We are very concerned for the many people who have been or will be hurt by Michael’s actions.

“We encourage all of our churches to pray for all those affected.”

I am more convinced than ever that church celebrity culture must die and die quickly! It wouldn't hurt if the Evangelical Church died as well! I'm curious how this got so far. Two years? How could NOBODY had verified this story?? There were no doctors? No medical records? Nobody visited him at the hospital during treatments? His wife was soooooooo concerned she never went with him to any doctor visits, tests, exams, or when he was supposedly in the hospital god knows how many times?

This whole damn thing is the biggest SCAM & SHAM perpetrated by all around it or everyone around it are the stupidest people to ever live and should never had made it this far in life. How they have escaped Natural Selection is beyond me, perhaps they to have been drinking the Kool-Aid!

With all the hits the Evangelical Church has been taking over the years, particularly the last few one should think before they go tearing down other churches, religions, & people they had better tend their OWN damn backyards first, epically those who are tending them. So they next time you wonder why SO many people are turned off by Christianity and GOD remember these men and many others like them, as well as proving my Boyfriend and his beliefs about Christianity right.

This is the most disgusting, sickening, deplorable thing I have ever heard, seen, or read. This WORM should be figuratively and literally CRUCIFIED!

In my church in Kyiv, Ukraine we had men's group meetings that were based on one of his books: Purpose Driven Life. Few other churches in Ukraine even try to follow Saddleback Church model, adapting it to our local culture. Celebrate Recovery program started in Saddleback Church and makes its steps into Eastern Europe. Kyiv Theological Seminary hosted the Celebrate Recovery Conference on June 23-27, 2008. People from around Ukraine came for the training to experience the program themselves and take it to their churches.

Professors of our seminary require students in church planting program read his books and write book reports. Students then also required analyzing how they can contextualize the principles in their communities. Warren's books are not the only books we use in our church planting curriculum, many of other authors are required of students to read, but his books definitely in our reading focus.

Rick Warren's church is one of top influential evangelical churches in America and globally. My heart is burden with this question: will evangelical church in Ukraine have her own national Rick Warren someday? Hopefully, our seminary could do its part by training, equipping and forming next generation of leaders. For the future of evangelical church. To the glory of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ.

In this article, Joe explains how he was introduced to Psalm singing. He explains the benefits of Psalm singing and then direction on how to learn to sing Psalms. Finally he makes an observation about the use of hymns and psalms in the church.

You can check out Joe's blog, Mining Grace, HERE. I'm sure I will be drawing from other articles of his as well. He posts on a host of helpful and relevant topics (like his daily Bible reading considerations).

You can check out his article, Rediscovering the Psalms, HERE.

In conclusion of this post I'd like to share how I was introduced to Psalm singing.

In 1998 I moved to Grand Rapids, MI, to attend a Bible College. I recall sitting next to a guy Randall Pederson, who always had a Puritan book with him (and who later co-authored, Meet the Puritans, with Dr. Beeke). Starving for good preaching, since I attended a church that was going through a 10-part series on Y2K and Left Behind, I asked him where he worshipped. He was a member of the Heritage Netherlands Reformed Church. I decided to visit, and not only was I convicted by the preaching, but when it came time to worship in song, I noticed in their "hymnbook" that it was a Psalm - an imprecatory Psalm at that, Ps. 83! Not only was it a novel idea to me at the time to sing Scripture, but my heart swelled as we called upon the Lord to "smite Thy enemies today who in their pride combine!" And how fitting was this, for Dr. Beeke's text was Matt 16:18 "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." The Psalms were relevant to the promise of Christ, and the Church was acknowledging Christ's power against His enemies even today. This was much more powerful, more fitting, more biblical than "Lord I Lift Your Name on High." And so my first experience was both a worship and a reflective experience.

The next week I visited another church through a mutual friend and here too they used the Psalms. This church was seeking to make a transition to exclusive psalmody which I had never heard of. There was a series preached on worship, by Rev. Ray Lanning (who is my minister today). He was explaining the Biblical doctrine of worship from 2 Kings 17. How God carried the Northern Kingdom into exhile mainly because they had introduced innovations to His prescribed worship for them. When the Assyrian king allowed other Gentiles to move into the Northern territory, God used lions to devour some of them. Wanting to know what manner of God this was they inquired of the Assyrian king, who sent the Jewish priests to go teach them how to worship their God. Well they of course taught them the wrong way, and so the writer sarcastically states that "these nations feared the LORD, and served their graven images, both their children, and their children's children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this day." Well of course this was the institution of Samaritan worship, which Jesus rebukes in John 4, when He says to the Samaritan woman at the well, "Ye worship ye know not what."

Rev. Lanning wrote an article as well on Psalm singing in the New Testament, drawing from the texts Eph 5:19, and Col 3:16. I then understood the context and content of these passages. Psalm singing was consistent in the New Testament with the ordinance in the Old Testament. My second experience was borth an educational  and enlightened experience.

I am thankful for the inspired Hymnbook that the Lord has given to His Church, and Lord willing this will be a theme I take on this week at Endeavoring Relevant Progress.

I wanted to watch this because I was a baby christian. Turns out this movie scared the hell out of me. If I was asked to be reborn from the message in the movie, I would rather kill myself. There was a scene where Pastor Becky Fischer welcome her group of campkids with a condemning message and the next day, put up powerpoint slides like "SIN" in uppercase Arial red font, and "THE PUNISHMENT FOR SIN IS DEATH". She said to the camera, "There is a font that is bloody and red... " She found that font and was so pleased with her "work"! Seriously, if anyone wants to know Jesus better, "Joseph Prince" would be the person to look up. Seeing the scenes in the movie was just like attending a service in America all over again, except the message was like glaring down at me. It's so horrid.

It was after many days that i heard from my pastor's video, "In many places, it seems like it is the purpose of the preacher to put as many people under condemnation or sin condemnation consciousness so that they cry, they wail before God, and they are really (feeling) condemned, and he (the preacher) feels good to affect people like that. He feels like, to help people be conscious of sin is to help them be conscious of God. Nothing could be further from the truth!"

When I heard this, my thoughts went to Jesus Camp immediately. My pastor was describing the scene exactly as it was. To Non-Christians, the sobbing and wailing of church members may be puzzling or even terrifyingly abusive, but to Christians of that church, it was perfectly normal, and they were perfectly willing to undergo it. No wonder the string of non-Christian commentators on Flixster got so afraid and even called us (Christians) lunatics or similar.

In the movie, a young boy named Levi who had such an outstanding character and maturity and possibly his appearance stood out too (long-tailed hair), was called to guest-preach in one of the evenings of the kids camp. He preached Jesus! He preached Jesus as a protector...as a savior. The crowd cheered and clapped. I wonder if Becky Fischer saw the contrast in her audience's reactions.

I remembered a very disturbing scene when Becky Fischer took the camera crew into her office and showed them some plastic toys. "This is Adam, this is Eve," she pointed to 2 Barbie dolls, Ken and Barbie). She said the kids these days are very visual and impressionable, and that these Barbie dolls, naked and covered with some plastic green leaves were used to reenact the fall of mankind when "Ken" (as Adam) ate the forbidden fruit. Oh My God! How sad can that be! Instead of telling us how Jesus had saved the world with one death, she chooses to tell to her kids, over and over again, how the fall of Adam had cursed the whole world. Cursing especially the Christians. (Because now that they know...) More--she took out one of those stretchy rubber toys, this particular one shaped in a hand with a very long arm. She then flicked the rubber toy to a plastic brain mold sitting on a shelf nearby. She flicked a few times before it was successfully caught on the brain mold. She said, "See how dirty ideas stick to your brain like nasty stickies" and said this is for demonstrating to the kids that a dirty thought can persist in your mind very easily, so it should not be left to fester. I think this is just pure sick.

Watch Pastor Prince short clip:

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8971621632253779842]

New Creation Church, Singapore
Joseph Prince Ministries, International
Joseph Prince Ministries, Facebook
Joseph Prince Media, YouTube

"Do two walk together unless they have agreed to meet?" Amos 3:7

I am tired of people saying that we must reach across and shake hands for the sake of a better good. Yes, we should help those in need, especially those suffering from a horrific disease like HIV/AIDS. However, do we relax our hold on truth and righteousness to do so? I don't think so.

No amount of money or publicity for my Christian charity could cause me to partner with someone who is fully committed to continuing to allow the murder of millions of unborn babies and even go further in allowing partial birth abortion.

Agreeing to disagree may be ok on small "gnat" issues for the sake of unity in the Body of Christ but as a general rule, there is no unity between light and darkness. It saddens me to see such leaders in the Body of Christ turn their eyes away from the serious issue of abortion which has caused bloodguilt on our land and be swept away by the charisma of a Presidential Canidate and possible publicity by being connected with him.

Here’s a ChristianPost.com article:

  Prominent Christian leaders such as Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes were praised by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) this weekend as role models of Christians who put their faith into action.

“The church is at once a very familiar and a very misunderstood topic... [This] misunderstanding results from the multiple usages of the term church” on one level and on “a more profound level – a lack of understanding of the basic nature of the church.”[1] Both the Old and New Testaments use words which when translated variously describe the church to be:

¨         Individuals or groups called together by God, for His purpose.[2]

¨         The location or structure where those who are called together actually meet.[3]

¨         Multiple, independent groups meeting in places such as a town or a region.[4]

¨         All of the individuals, throughout the whole world, including those living, dead, and yet to be born, who God has called to salvation through Christ Jesus.[5]

What is common to each of these ideas for the word church is the concept of “calling out for the purpose of gathering.”[6] While the root words in the Greek and Hebrew are general terms and do not specifically refer to religious gatherings, two things become clear in their Biblical use. It is God who is doing the calling and this calling is for His greater glory. While we certainly benefit from His calling, the implication and reality is that the church is not about me. The church is all about our Triune God, for “there is no church apart from the redemptive work of Christ and from the renewing operation of the Holy Spirit.”[7]

In the narrative of the first mega-church, God called Israel out of bondage in Egypt to meet with Him and worship Him at Mount Sinai. Today, God still calls people out of bondage and into the worshiping assembly of the church. As His called people, God gave Israel the mission to be an example and witness to other nations of His power and glory. He has called the church of today for the same purpose. We are still God’s chosen people, called together to worship the LORD and to be a witness of His saving power and glory to those around us.

There is one significant difference however between the church of the Old Testament and the church today. While Israel relied upon the ritual of the Law and the promise of a Messiah for salvation, the church today “may walk in the full light provided by Him who is the Son of God… and who on the day of Pentecost made good His promise to grant unto His church the Spirit of truth.”[8] Pentecost is the defining moment for the church. From that day onward the Holy Spirit has been poured out on each and every believer as an empowering presence of the living God, enabling us to be the church as never before. The church is the body of believers in Christ, called by God to gather for His glory, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to fulfill the mission He has called us to fulfill.

I think ahead and wonder, what will the church of 2020 be preaching and teaching? Will they cling to truth or will the watering down and domesticating of God continue? What theology will my children know and understand? It starts with what I teach them.

As I continue to work my way through 1 John I am repeatedly struck by the way John weaves together several themes, yet seems to keep a single idea in focus.  John writes to help the reader understand how we may know God – that we may know God.  Yet throughout the letter he calls us to holiness and love. 

At the same time I am working through 1 John, the leaders of our church are working through a process to discern the identity, mission, and vision for Walnut Hill Church.  Having gone through this process with other churches I realize that most of what we come up with will be attributes that are shared by many faithful churches, though there are also certainly things that are unique to us.  These unique items are those gifts and passions God has granted to this church – as he does to all churches. It is our God-given personality. 

In my mind these two things are converging: Our vision & mission, and John’s words to Christ’s church.  And thinking about them together reminded me about a brief work by Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian.  This work challenged my thinking a few years ago, and to some degree, I hope, it has shaped me personally, and therefore has shaped my ministry.

Schaeffer suggests that Christians have always looked for ways to distinguish themselves, by symbols and marks. However there is one mark that has persevered through all generations as the genuine mark of Christianity, and therefore the Church: Love.  Schaeffer points out that Christ ordained this to be an enduring and authoritative mark. He asserts that Christ has made this mark so reflective that the absence of it gives the world the right to judge that someone is not a Christian!  By extension then, the world would have the right to judge that a church is not truly Christian if Love is not pervasive.

Love for one another is pervasive at Walnut Hill.  What we are trying to discover, however, is how we might more openly express that love to the community, and world, around us.  Such expression is not absent, but we want to be more deliberate.

I’ve re-read The Mark of the Christian a couple times this week.  And now I’ve decided to publish it in a multi-part series over the next few weeks.  It is a work worth considering, and any attempt I make to summarize would be woefully inadequate.

First and perhaps foremost, I need the church because I am a dysfunctional sinner. Calvin wrote that the church is "the divine institution to assemble and minister to the elect in the earthly condition in which they are[5]." Yes, I have been saved by faith through the Grace of God, but the fact is, I still have tendencies to do sinful things (just ask my friends and family). We come to the church and live in the church as sinners in need of cleansing and continual healing. I need the church because it is a home to sinners like me; sinners welcomed by God to a common journey of healing and re-creation.[6]

Secondly, I need the church because it is through the church that God kick started my faith and keeps it running[7]. Without faith there is neither salvation nor Christian maturity, but in order to have faith, I need to hear the Word of God (Romans 10:17) [8]. The Word is the primary tool which God uses to build up my faith. Through the Sacraments, God draws me closer to Him[9] and allows me to experience His presence, and that is faith building, but it is in the preaching and teaching [10] of the Word that He encourages my faith.[11]

Finally, I need the church because it has the duty to nurture, care, and provide guidance for Christians much as a mother cares for her children. "For there is no other way to enter life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and lastly unless she keep us under her care and guidance... [For] our weakness does not allow us to be dismissed from her school until we have been pupils all our lives[12]."

Thoughtful and constructive comments are encouraged.

[3] Ibid, p.1016. Italics mine.

[4] Can a Christian ever truly be stagnant? That's the word which came to mind as I was writing, but I question its use. Are not Christians either growing or regressing in their faith? Can we ever be simply stagnate?

[5] Institutes, p.1012, footnote 2.

[6] The idea of sinners being part of the church is a reality that the church must deal with. All sides of the emergent conversation are wrestling with this issue, but for me it is pretty cut and dry. Until I die and go to heaven, I'm going to have some sinful tendencies. Prayerfully, as I grow in my faith, my regenerated heart will over power some of those tendencies, but the battle will remain until I see Christ.

[7] Institutes, p. 1011. The full quote: which sounds rather arrogant to today's ears, says "that in our ignorance and sloth (to which [Calvin adds] fickleness of disposition) we need outward helps to beget and increase faith within us, and advance it to its goal." Ignorant, slothful, and fickle describes far too individuals in the church today; myself included.

[8] Ibid, p. 1017. Says Calvin, "God breathes faith into us only by the instrument of his gospel, as Paul points out the ‘faith comes from hearing' [Rom. 10:17]. Likewise, the power to save rests with God [Rom. 1:16]; but (as Paul again testifies) He displays and unfolds it in the preaching of the gospel."

[9] Ibid, p. 1012.

[10] Ibid, p1019. According to Calvin: "We must hold to what we have quoted from Paul - that the church is built up solely by outward preaching, and that [Christians] are held together by one bond only: that with common accord, through learning and advancement, they keep the church order established by God."

[11] Most of the time I was renouncing the church, I was listening to really good Christian preaching and teaching. Radio and television, and now the internet, are amazing media and I do not want to down play the role some preachers and teachers have through that media. I have a good friend who came to know Christ through a television program, so I know some tele-evangelism works. I believe that the seeds of her faith however were planted in the local church she sometimes attended as a youth. The Lord might have started the seed of faith growing through television, but He keeps it growing through the local body of believers she calls church. The point I want to emphasize here is that the hearing of the Word from radio and television is not what Calvin is talking about. Certainly Calvin knew nothing of these media and yes, they may help our spiritual growth, but I am convinced that it is hearing the Word in a local body of believers that Calvin is addressing. Writes Calvin, "We see how God, who could in a moment perfect his own, nevertheless desires them to grow up into [maturity] solely under the education of the church. We see the way set for it: the preaching of the heavenly doctrine has been enjoined upon the pastors." As we will see later in this series, the role of pastor is one that is properly exercised at the local level. I am convinced that one cannot truly be a pastor through the radio, television, or even the internet.

[12] Ibid, p. 1016.

Moral Man and Immoral Society

Reinhold Niebuhr

My notes:

I abstain from elaborating or further quoting to clarify the nature of the obstacles which confront a religious soul. They are all that takes a person away from God.

Image: Solar Navigator

The very fact that this story exists tells us all we need to know about the state of preachingin the Evangelical Church. (PS--I suspect it is a publicity stunt by the website mentioned in the article.) I wonder if their pledge includes provisions for preachers who have cheated in their preparations? You know what I mean: Like those pledges kids can sign that represent a 're-virginization' after they have already fornicated. Seriously, is there a re-integrity-ization for preachers? This is beyond pathetic. Seriously, this story is hilarious. What does it say about the rest of the preachers in the world who won't sign their pledge?

jerry

I suggest that if we limit the use of "church" to meaning those individuals - past, present, and future - who have an eternal relationship with Jesus Christ, and who thus constitute THE CHURCH (theologically, the invisible church), then we need new terms for BEING the (visible) church. As good post-modernists and emerging theologians let's deconstruct the language of church and define terms, even if they are long, overly simplistic, or invented, that say what we mean and are in keeping with Scripture.

For instance, might we not be better refering to "meeting places" rather than church (aka buildings, structures, tabernacles, etc). I often leave the house saying, "I'm going to church." What I really mean is that I am going to a certain building, at a certain location, where a local group of Christians routinely gather. My former "local gathering of believers" began meeting over 130 years ago in a field next to a certain tree. That was their meeting place, their church. Maybe yours is Starbucks, a home, a rented space in a warehouse, or a camp ground. Local gatherings of the church need not be limited to dedicated buildings (with or without steeples). It's easy to say, "I'm going to church," but I do not in fact go to church. I am part of the church wherever I am and I'm thinking, for clarity, we need to think and speek this way.

If believers have gathered to worship, hear the Word, partake of the Sacraments, and be held accountable by other believers, then wherever they are has become a Christian meeting place. And, that place may be occupied by believers at any moment of the day, week, or year. Having a regular gathering place in which to worship, hear the Word, partake of the Sacraments, and be held accountable is important. We are told not to forsake meeting together with other believers, with other members of the church body, for good reason. A finger cut off from the hand is simply a paperweight (hyberbolic metaphor to be sure) and of limited use (been there, done that, been grafted back in). The meeting together of believers however is only part, perhaps a large part, of being the church. This is one area in which I see the emerging church "getting it right." They are not content with "going to church" on Sunday morning or maybe even a few nights during the week to "do church." They want to "BE the chur