Her brethren and sisters

So Sarah Palin's a Christian, huh? So what? Well, this is kind of a hobby horse with me, but it's important nonetheless. McCain could still unexpectedly win this election, then he could drop dead, and usher in the Age of President Palin.

Palin would almost certainly be the Christian Fundamentalist born-again true believer President whom George Bush never was, despite his cynical flirtation with the religious right (and their votes): Palin would truly believe that the clock of time is fast running out on hapless, sinful humanity, and while she might deny it in public, it is very probable that she would not be moved to do much anything about things like climate change, because, if as the Bible says, the planet and most of its inhabitants are soon to be toast, why bother to lift a finger to interfere with God's prophetic whirligig?

At the same time, she'd be hugely over-motivated to get involved in anything involving Israel, the Jews, Arab states, nuclear bombs, warfare, because God has given the true believers like her a blueprint in the Bible for how the End Times will begin and end.

What kind of Christian is Sarah Palin? She's an Evangelical / Fundamentalist type, and she has worshiped at Alaskan churches where belief in Dispensationalism is as important as Santa Claus is to Christmas. They believe in the actual, now, current and ongoing fulfillment of bible prophecy, and at best it can be described as: "and they all died unhappily, ever after [true believers like Palin excepted]."

Anything that is part of our contemporary world, from the Teletubbies to gay rights, from energy policy to earthquakes can be fitted (shoehorned) somewhere into the vague but colorful verses from the book of Revelations and the Prophecy of Daniel:

'Ed Kalnins, the pastor of Wasilla Assembly of God since 1999, recently told a journalist, "Scripture specifically mentions oil instability as a sign of the Rapture. We're seeing more and more oil wars. The contractions of the fulfilment of prophecies are getting tighter and tighter." Larry Kroon, pastor of Wasilla Bible, preached last July that God could destroy the earth as soon as this autumn by raising up "a revived, prosperous and powerful Communist Russia with a web of alliances across the Middle East." The Juneau Christian Center, also dispensationalist, last year played host to John Hagee, the Christian Zionist pastor whose endorsement McCain had to repudiate because he preached that God had used Hitler to drive European Jews to Palestine.' -- Frances Fitzgerald in the New York Review of Books.

In Alaska, Palin has associated regularly with her fellow believers in this dangerous mix of faith and fireballs since her childhood. Now, with McCain putting her on the ticket, they have at least a chance of seeing one of their own finally occupying the most powerful pulpit in the world: the Oval Office.

Here's a cute little cartoon from one of the most popular End Times web sites, which sort of sums up their world view, from the days not long after 9/11. That's Jesus leading a heavenly host into battle on Earth, having just apparently lobbed a 'fireball', or nuclear bomb, right on target into the Middle East. Go Jesus!

Many more scary cartoons can be viewed here. Note that some are actually quite humorous; don't let the humor dilute the fact that this is a deadly, dark, fatalistic and very dangerous world view, and that Sarah Palin almost certainly believes a great deal of this stuff.

[The CUNY Graduate Center in New York City hosted a 2007 conference which sought to bring attention to the "Real Agenda of the Religious Right"].