The Positives of Palin’s Pentecostalism

Among the new information Americans are having to process as they get to know Sarah Palin is that she is a Pentecostal. This, understandably, strikes fear into the heart of many a secularist and sends a nervous shudder up the spine of even her fellow Christians. Pentecostals are, after all, Holy Rollers, pew jumpers, empty headed followers of crafty Elmer Gantry’s and the surest evidence that religious excess survives in the modern world. This, of course, is the unflattering image most Americans have come to believe.

In fact, Pentecostalism has grown up while the world took little notice. Begun as a reaction to the modernism of the early 1900’s, Pentecostalism was revivalistic, retreatist and often legalistic. Women took care to show no ankle or wrist and children were threatened with hell if they so much as attended a Saturday afternoon matinee. Pentecostals exacted a high price for holiness. In time, though, they matured. Much of this was due to the leadership of Oral Roberts, who defied the Pentecostal fear of film by using movies to evangelize, defied the Pentecostal fear of education by starting a university, and defied the Pentecostal fear of other Christian denominations by calling all who believed in Jesus to swim in the waters of spiritual renewal. His ministry and university became a font of refreshing for religious movements as diverse as Charismatic Catholics, Renewal Episcopalians and the reactionary, hesitant Pentecostals of Roberts’ religious roots.

The Assembly of God denomination also matured during these years and became one of the great surviving movements of the Pentecostal era. Sarah Palin’s experience provides a prism for the neo-Pentecostal experience. Her family attended their beloved A.O.G. church and drew from its deep well of biblical teaching, passion to know God, and eagerness to lovingly change the world. Sarah would have known believers of a deeply mystical cast, those who spoke in tongues while praying and energetic worshippers who occasionally shouted their praise in church. There was an emphasis on sacrificial generosity, on Christian fellowship across economic and ethnic lines and, of course, on missionary outreach. Indeed, the event at which Palin spoke the words about God’s will in Iraq which have become so controversial was in fact a commissioning service for youth soon to be sent abroad. And it was this sense of social obligation that moved a young Sarah Palin to political service. This was far removed from Pentecostalism’s retreatist roots but very much in tune with the new brand of socially relevant Pentecostalism which has become the norm today.

Among the four candidates for executive office the nation is now considering, only two are versed in the street level religious experiences many Americans know. John McCain lived in a high-church, military brand of Episcopalianism most of his life. Joe Biden attended exclusive Catholic schools and has long been a lover of the rituals and liturgies that arise from his historic faith. But Obama and Palin have both sat in churches where poor and rich worshipped alike, where religious passions spilled out in sometimes uncouth ways and in which the call of Jesus to serve the hurting took practical form. We should be glad that this is so. It has made Obama the compassionate soul he has become. And Palin’s Pentecostalism has given her the common touch while also tethering her life and her politics to a sense of moral obligation to God. This should be a cause not of suspicion but of gratitude. American’s should honor Palin’s faith not only for the good it has done her but for the symbol she is of Pentecostalism stepping afresh on the global stage.