Sarah Palin, Pentecostal: The Second Coming for the USA?

Hello, blog friends,I just came across the following column by author Jeanette Winterson and thought you might want to read a British intellectual’s take on Sarah Palin: http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/pages/column/column_item.asp?columnID=119

What are we going to do about Sarah Palin?     As far as I am concerned it will be like having the late Mrs Winterson in the White House; something she would have enjoyed hugely, but the rest of us, less so.    I am one of the few arty intellectuals on the planet who really understands what it means to be a Pentecostal. For those of you don’t know, I was raised that way, and so, when people talk about it lightly it makes me shudder. It is a serious faith and an active faith, and if anyone thinks that Sarah Palin will be a Pentecostal in private and a politician in public – forget it. She is going to make Mitt Romney look like Richard Dawkins.   Oh dear. All we can do is vote her out, and let’s hope that happens, because if it doesn’t then we might as well get into the body bags now.   Pentecostals believe in the Second Coming and they want it to happen – they will be in Rapture, and the rest of us will get thrown into the pit with Satan and the other losers. Well, so goes the story, but it is a powerful story, and there will be little restraint on activities that will push us to the brink of all-out war and beyond. If SP is really Pentecostal to the core, Armageddon won’t worry her, and she might even see herself as destined to be part of the Final Hour.   Pentecostals are big on Bible interpretation, and they love reading themselves into the Book of Revelations – if you haven’t read it yourself recently, go and stay the night in a cheap motel and you’ll find the Gideon in the drawer. Keep the light on and get a stiff Scotch.   I don’t know if I am worried, but I am concerned. Even yesterday, a guy from the Times (London), remarked that SP hadn’t been born into the Pentecostal faith, but had embraced it, revealing how little even educated media types know about that branch of faith. It doesn’t matter if both your parents are Pentecostal; you must still accept the faith yourself, in your own right, through Baptism by Total Immersion. It is a faith you choose.    This is really good as an idea – the worst thing in life is passivity. Don’t accept anything you haven’t worked out for yourself. Yes, great, but in the case of SP, it means she has thought about it and decided to live it.    Pentecostalism is pretty basic stuff. It takes the nastier bits of the Old and New Testaments, and uses them as tenets for modern life.   It doesn’t understand the concept of sexual choice, nor of gender discrimination. It is low on intellectual questioning, high on faith.    But faith in what? Mainly what the Pastor tells us according to his interpretation of the scriptures, so if SP’s Pastor believes in witchcraft, then witchcraft will soon be an issue in the White House.    She calls herself a hockey mum. Small-town values grafted onto a regressive understanding of scriptural truth is scary stuff.    I am not a Richard Dawkins type, and I believe in the validity of religious faith, and I believe that religion has just as often been a civilising influence as it has been a destructive dark power. I prefer a world where there is recognition of the invisible and the unseen, the unprovable. I do not find that people who have no faith, and no religious values behave better, or are better people than those who have faith of some kind. It is not straightforward.    Some of the best things have been done in the name of religion – and yes, some of the worst.    My worry is that there is a particular strand of folksy Americanism that is distrustful of ideas, of intellectuals, of science, of enquiry, of doubt, and so on. George Bush has fed this head-in-sand, gun-in-holster, pie-in-oven, stuff, and Palin will make it much worse.    Let’s not despair, but let’s not be head-in-sand ourselves either. This is a very serious time