Painful Moral Conflict Confronts Sarah Palin in Regard to Premarital Sexuality
Palin’s views on moral purity and inflexibility on pre-marital sexuality should trouble voters who are considering her fitness for the vice presidency—especially knowing Palin pledged to James Dobson that she would be a hard-core advocate for his views on pre-marital sex and all those other dictums in the Right-to-Life agenda. Sarah Palin's extreme religious views have made her daughter and others like her unfortunate examples because of out-of-wedlock pregnancy and premarital sexual relations.
Sarah Palin's own church of conversion offers no backing down or wishy washy-ness on teen pregnancy or sex outside of marriage. It’s stand is firm and harsh. It’s a sure bet liberals will find it hard to tolerate--strict moral conservatives will find it hard to achieve for themselves and/or their children.
The Wasilla Assemblies of God doctrine is not given to moral equivocation, it states boldly:
Continued below the fold.....
"The Bible further teaches that those who participate in
sexual immorality (i.e.: premarital and extra-marital sex) cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 15-20). Consequently, they are destined for eternity without Him (Galatians 5:19-21; Revelation 21:8)."
See Assemblies of God: http://ag.org/...
Sarah Palin has firm personal and political belief in Abstinence Only --the private and public policy stance she holds for her citizenry in Alaska and ultimately all America's youth.
Palin's position on this sexual topic, alone, helps to galvanize her credentials for V P for James Dobson and morals-first right wing Christian conservatives--the absolutely the essential voting block McCain/Palin must control and energize in order to win the election.
This coming Sunday is D day for evangelicals. Thousands of churches will be handing out the last of the infamous Voter’s Guides and going over the church directories with volunteers seeking out and entreating "friendlies" to save the Palin/McCain ticket for God’s sake. Millions, James Dobson claims, are in constant prayer and agony over the outcome.
Dobson begs God for a miracle.
The personal and denominational standards Sarah Palin holds for herself and her family are part of her sacred right, freedom of religion. However, going against the realities of human behavior and science to make a church doctrine (enforced by the threat of Hell) into public policy as Palin is wont to do is pure nonsense.
Using the coercive powers of government's police force to enforce a sectarian/doctrinally driven sex education and health policy is invasive of personal freedoms and spawns more STD's and AIDs leading to dire and/or deadly health problems for individuals and staggering costs for our existing health care systems and services. The stock argument against condoms is that they sometimes fail. Given the alternative factoid: condoms often succeed in their application and prevent both unwanted pregnancies and STD’s and AID’s, which is the better choice, if sexual activity should occur: Condoms or unprotected sex?
Sexual sinners, offenders of God’s law, have one hope to save their eternal souls; repent and seek forgiveness according to Sarah Palin’s church of upbringing, the Assemblies of God. Simply marrying a baby’s father is not the way to salvation, and does not remove a wayward soul from damnation. Only godly repentance will suffice. Marriage following unmarried pregnancy, while socially acceptable, it is not theologically pardoning and redemptive from eternal damnation under Assemblies of God dogma and discipline.
Assemblies doctrine further states:
"But the good news is that God can and will forgive any sin; including sexual immorality. When there is acceptance of Christ’s forgiveness and genuine repentance (a change of heart and turning to the righteous ways of God), even those who have committed immoral acts or lived sinful lives qualify for inheriting His Kingdom."
It’s clear that if a woman, pregnant outside marriage, is currently continuing to have sex prior to her upcoming marriage, with her baby’s father, she would not be displaying "genuine repentance (a change of heart and turning to the righteous ways of God.)" And in case, God forbid, a woman or man should die an untimely death without "genuine repentance," they’d go straight to Hell.
This is the "doctrinally practical" and specific sexual morality to which Sarah Palin has long subscribed, harsh as it may be or as offensive to others, is at the heart of her Pentecostal upbringing. Palin has gone "unaffiliated" and the time frame of this decision matches Palin’s entry into higher levels of politics. She may have left the Wasilla Assembly of God, but she still remains close to her former church and is a frequent guest or visitor there. Sarah may want to disaffiliate herself from blowback caused by her tradition, but that will not work. As little as she reveals, and as little as we know about her, these known facts are cardinal to our consideration of her background and potential decision making framework.
Sarah may come out of such a church, but those teachings will always remain integral to her as per the axiom of scripture, "Train up a child in the way (s)he should go, and when (s)he is old (s)he will not depart from it."
Remember in Palin’s tradition the scripture which teaches these things is inerrant and the doctrine based on it, inviolate.
The Assemblies of God are crystal clear:Hell is a real place. http://ag.org/...
Sarah Palin is a real and difficult problem for the Assemblies of God and for many strict-convictions Christians. Her own pre-marital sexual activities and out-of-wedlock pregnancy and then that of her daughter, while they may be forgiven, set no shining example of her church’s doctrine or standards for moral purity.
Certainly the daughter’s pregnancy (and earlier that of Sarah herself) and sexual activity outside of marriage are not any kind of conduct the Assemblies of God would commend or recommend for Christian youths. Such slipshod moral behaviors are not to be emulated according to Pentecostal standards.
Having chosen Palin as a candidate to run with John McCain--in order to gin up the religious base for the election--the Evangelicals and the family values coalition had to face up to real problems in the Palin family history. Out of practicality they have made a useful, but tainted choice with their endorsement of Sarah Palin. Palin’s a choice that is much more practical and political than it is morally becoming or edifying of moral principle the strict morals cabal elevate for all others.
However, once chosen, Sarah Palin has a specific job to perform for James Dobson and crew. The churches in this coalition, the foundations, and the contributors to this cause all will make a very serious and perhaps desperately successful attempt to "drag McCain across" the finish line in order to protect and expand their crusade for strict morals utilizing the coercive force of government.