Guardian UK: God bother in Wasilla

[marmar]

God bother in Wasilla
The resurgence of religion now marks the widest divide between US and European politics

Geoffrey Wheatcroft
The Guardian, Tuesday October 21 2008



Of all the dramatic changes history has witnessed since 1945 - the economic miracle in postwar western Europe, the collapse of Communism and now the latest boom and bust - none was more unforeseen than the resurgence of religion. A new "revolt of Islam" was quite unexpected 50 years ago, when secular Arab nationalism seemed the rising force, and when, for that matter, secular Israelis didn't guess that "religious Zionists" would one day make the running in their country.

And yet what may be the most striking and important development is the renewed role of religion in the US, and its political implications. John McCain has tried to negatively associate Barack Obama with Jeremiah Wright, his fire-eating radical pastor (or former pastor), but much less attention has been paid to Sarah Palin's membership of the Assembly Church of God in Wasilla and to her own pastor, Ed Kalnins. When Colin Powell endorsed Obama on Sunday, he said Palin was not yet ready to be president. He might have added that her religious opinions also raised questions about her fitness for high office.

Religion may now be the largest gulf between Europe and the US. Mitt Romney, the Mormon who ran for the Republican nomination, spoke of the empty cathedrals of Europe, and Tony Blair was the oddity among European politicians in his public protestations of faith.

Maybe Blair would be more at home in the US, if not quite at Saddleback, the "evangelical megachurch" in California, where McCain and Obama bared their sinful souls. Obama blamed his early "experiments" with alcohol and drugs on "a certain selfishness", and McCain confessed to his "greatest moral failing" with the end of his first marriage.

And yet, weird and embarrassing as this sounded to Europeans, it would have done so to Americans also not long ago. For Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt to have taken part in any such event during the 1932 presidential campaign would have seemed quite absurd, or Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey in 1948. Four years later, Dwight Eisenhower had so little religious upbringing that he needed to be discreetly baptised before he reached the White House. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/21/religion-christianity-palin

[BrklynLiberal]

1. The RW Fundies started this here...and will be trying to do it in Europe as well.

[marmar]

2. I just don't see it working....Secularism is so ingrained in the culture in Europe....

.... just like religion is here.

[BrklynLiberal]

4. I think it will be a lot more difficult to pull this crap in European countries..

[BrklynLiberal]

3. The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party

http://www.theocracywatch.org/

One Electorate Under God? A Dialogue on Religion and American Politics
http://pewforum.org/events/?EventID=59

American Politics and the Religious Divide
http://www.brookings.edu/events/2006/0926politics.aspx

[BrklynLiberal]

5. Two posts with lots of info on this...The so-called "Moral Majority" -

which was neither - was instrumental in getting the fundies involved in politics.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x170685

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7538890