As Governor, Palin Blurred Lines Between Church And State

An AP study of Palin’s record shows she used her office to promote religous causes at taxpayer expense.  Since 2006 when she became governor, $13,000 of taxpayer money has been spent attending religous events.

This photo from the Web site of The Office of the Governor of Alaska, shows, from left,  Alaska  Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, Gov. Sarah Palin, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, being prayed over by Pastor Ed Kalnins and a congregation made up of nearly 20 different churches and denominations at One Lord Sunday in the Mat-Su Valley, Alaska on June 8, 2008. (AP Photo/Web site of The Office of the Governor of Alaska)

Plain claims her personal opinions “don’t bleed over into policies. However:

An AP review of her time as mayor, from late 1996 to 2002, also reveals a commingling of church and state.

Records of her mayoral correspondence show that Palin worked arduously to organize a day of prayer at city hall. She said that with local ministers’ help, Wasilla – a city of 7,000 an hour’s drive north of Anchorage – could become “a light, or a refuge for others in Alaska and America.”

“What a blessing that the Lord has already put into place the Christian leaders, even though I know it’s all through the grace of God,” she wrote in March 2000 to her former pastor. She thanked him for the loan of a video featuring a Kenyan preacher who later would pray for her protection from witchcraft as she sought higher office.

That sounds as though she does want to implement her religious beliefs in terms of who our leaders are.  And her religious beliefs have informed other decisions.

In that same period, she also joined a grass-roots, faith-based movement to stop the local hospital from performing abortions, a fight that ultimately lost before the Alaska Supreme Court.

Palin’s former church and other evangelical denominations were instrumental in ousting members of Valley Hospital’s board who supported abortion rights – including the governor’s mother-in-law, Faye Palin.

I suppose this proves that while blood may be thicker than water, this isn’t so if it happens to be holy water.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.