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The attacks on Governor Palin increasingly focus on her religious faith and display the profound and hateful intolerance of the attackers. Tonight I received an e-mail from an old friend who expressed alarm at my enthusiasm for the McCain-Palin ticket:

“I heard that Gov. Palin's church speaks in tongues and believes in 'rapture' and believes God tells us to build a pipeline,” he wrote. “And her church tries to 'cure' gay people.  Is that true? She did say the war in Iraq is a mission from God or some such nonsense. What was Abu Ghraib, Haditha? She's scary...

"Palin is Elmer Gantry, is Amy Semple McHockeymom, says Keith Olbermann. We are a religious country, but we don't like religious extremism. Having faith is a nice thing to know about someone in office, but if you believe God is directing troop movements in Falluja, Americans will surely ask: 'What the @#$^??' Converting gays to heterosexuals? Being gay may be caused by some things, but not praying enough isn't one of them. It makes people who hate gays feel better about hating them. And she may be a heartbeat away? Are you insane?"

Of course, a careful examination of any church or any denomination would find plenty of potentially embarrassing or offensive details. Assaults on Mitt Romney’s Mormonism followed the same game plan as the nasty cracks about Palin: take a religion that enriches the lives of millions of good and decent people and focus on its distinctive or unusual aspects to try to discredit the candidate (and, incidentally, the entire faith community).

Every religioun looks odd from the outside – very much including my own. I know that it seems weird to non-Jews (and to non-observant Jews) that my observance involves shunning some delicious foods, praying with a contraption of leather straps and wooden boxes every morning, and not riding in a car on Friday night or Saturday. Those unfamiliar with Catholicism might find themselves perplexed by doctrines ranging from transubstantiation, to the virgin birth, to papal infallibility.

And then there’s the Afro-Centric theology and raging anti-American sermonizing of Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his Trinity United Church of Christ. Will the new scrutiny of the theology and preaching in Sarah Palin’s home churches in Wasilla bring us back for another round of debate about Obama’s relationship with the crackpot mentor he followed for twenty years?

It’s much better to leave discussion of any candidate’s faith alone and to accept two basic propositions about such debate:

1)      Every religion seems weird to those who haven’t been raised in that tradition, and

2)      The only way to judge a church or synagogue or mosque is to evaluate that community’s acts of kindness and compassion, and the extent to which that congregation encourages decent behavior and discourages self-destructive violence.

By this standard, Sarah Palin’s congregations (she grew up in the Wasilla Assembly of God but moved six years ago to the Wasilla Bible Church) look lovely: warm and welcoming, charitable and patriotic. So, by the way, do Mormon communities everywhere, or my Jewish community near Seattle (or Joe Lieberman’s in Connecticut), or even Obama and Wright’s Trinity United (okay, the patriotism is lacking with that one, but otherwise the church is supposed to be supportive of its members and constructive in the community).

And as far as the idea of “healing” homosexuals through prayer or spirituality, no one is forced to attend such programs. But if someone hopes that this approach can improve his or her life, and if tens of thousands report positive results, who are outsiders to say that they’re wrong? I’m personally skeptical of that “reparative” approach to sexual orientation but shouldn’t the notion of tolerance extend to those who hope the power of faith might help them achieve a more traditional family life?

The attacks on Governor Palin as a “religious extremist” demonstrate once again that militant secularists display less openness and acceptance of other points of view than do people of faith. In her Convention speech, Governor Palin never gave any sort of religious pitch, or even addressed the issues of abortion or marriage.

In other words, the angry response to her stems not from what she says or what she does, but who she is. There’s a word for that sort of response. It’s called “bigotry.”