First off, I'm not a fan of Palin either.
That said, PLEASE don't let this video be a deciding factor in your vote. The only parts Palin should be held accountable for are the parts she actually appears in. On a lesser level, you can count footage from her actual church.
The rest of the stuff, with people writhing on the ground or saying wacky religious right stuff? Can't be tied to Palin. Most of it isn't even her church. And the editing and production quality of this video are deliberately confusing and alarmist.
As an example, I grew up as a once-a-week Catholic. By eighth grade, I was already questioning the whole thing. Mine was a very typical midwestern Catholic church. However, we did have a visiting priest from Africa who SCREAMED at us about HELL for 45 minutes one Sunday. And, some of the church members were "born again," so they had their own meetings where they'd speak in tongues, weep and all that. Did that have anything to do with me and my beliefs? Hell no.
If you want to know about Palin and her religious beliefs, you'll have to go look them up. A few things I know (anyone please contradict if I'm wrong). She's a creationist and wouldn't mind if creationism was taught in the schools, although she didn't push for it as governor.
These are direct quotes from Palin herself:
"I can do my job there in developing our natural resources and doing things like getting the roads paved and making sure our troopers have their cop cars and their uniforms and their guns, and making sure our public schools are funded," she said in June to ministry students at her former church. "But really, all of that stuff doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God."
"Pray our military men and women who are striving to do what is right also for this country — that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," Palin said. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."
The only religious thing I've found on Palin that I find truly disturbing is this excerpt from Salon:
[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. “I bumped into her once after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God. I said, ‘Sarah, how can you believe in creationism — your father’s a science teacher.’ And she said, ‘We don’t have to agree on everything.’
“I pushed her on the earth’s creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she’d seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them.”
Munger also 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.’”]
If you think the end of days is coming, why would Global Warming, war in the Middle East, or running out of money and oil matter-- after all, it's all part of God's plan. That's the only part that disturbs me. If she really believes the end of the world is coming, she won't try to stop it.
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