"I pray all the time. I always have. Saying a prayer was the first thing I did when I learned I was going to have my first child and it was the last thing I did before I stepped out in front of more than forty million viewers to give my speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention. I asked God to crush my 'self' and give me His strength and grace for that time. I asked Todd and our kids to join me in prayer, seeking not self-glorification but an opportunity to freely express what I believed God had put in my heart to share."
Chapter Eight of Sarah Palin's America by Heart is titled "I Hear America Praying". How Ms. Palin can hear America praying over the din of her own constant prayer is anyone's guess, but in any case she does. "We are a prayerful country," she says. "We pray for inspiration and guidance, and also pray in thanksgiving and gratitude. We even have a quintessentially American holiday, Thanksgiving, devoted to precisely that purpose."* This chapter is studded with references to myriad famous Americans who have prayed--Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich^, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Franklin Roosevelt, and even Abraham Lincoln--and by chapter's end, it's hard to disagree with Ms. Palin's claim that "we are a prayerful country". Of course, it would have been hard to disagree with that claim even without the chapter and all its quotations; America's history of religiosity (public and private) is not exactly a secret.
Having thus belabored the obvious, what Sarah wants to know is, why do our "secular elites" and our "lamestream media" not understand the importance of prayer and religion in America? "It's getting pretty tiresome," she confides, "cataloging all the ways religious expression is under attack in America today."** Why are "religious displays...so darn controversial"? When Sarah was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she "had to fight for six Christmases to keep the baby Jesus manger scene on display on Wasilla Lake." Worse, "the Ten Commandments are becoming harder to find in American courthouses than unicorns."^^ Surprisingly, Ms. Palin makes no mention in this chapter of the supposed prohibition on prayer in public schools stemming from a Supreme Court ruling to which many on the right attribute the decline of our great republic--maybe she's doing a separate chapter on that, or even a separate book?
A woman of boundless energy, when Sarah is not fighting to keep the baby Jesus in full, taxpayer-sponsored view where He belongs, she's fighting to keep the city of New York from making "an intolerable and tragic mistake" by allowing a mosque to be erected "just steps from Ground Zero" in Manhattan. This is the sort of offensive public religiosity that forces Sarah to draw a line: "Of course the supporters of this project have a constitutional right to build a mosque on private land," she generously allows, adding "But just because they can do something doesn't mean they necessarily should." Rather, Ms. Palin explains, they ought to show "what our Founders called 'a decent respect for the opinions of mankind'--or in this case, their fellow Americans."*** In other words, according to Sarah, sometimes "religious displays" are properly considered "darn controversial," even when they're done by private groups on private land using private money. Maybe the government should put up a giant cross at Ground Zero instead.
Since no one that I know disputes the notion that America is a "prayerful country," it's difficult to see the rationale for this chapter, unless it's merely an excuse for Sarah to tout her own religiosity and prayerfulness, which she had already touted in the preceding chapter. As best I can tell, the message of Chapters Seven and Eight of America by Heart amounts to "Americans are a religious people, and I'm a religious woman. Americans are a prayerful people, and I'm a prayerful woman. Liberals, progessives, secular elites, and the lamestream media aren't religious or prayerful."^^^ So I guess now we know, thanks to Sarah Palin, who the real Americans are: an insight for which we ought to give thanks and praise indeed.
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*Our "quintessentially American holiday" has its counterpart in numerous countries around the world, including our neighbor to the north, Canada, whose Thanksgiving tradition arguably predates ours (see "Samuel Frobisher, explorer, 1578").
^That is, our first divorced President, whose personal indifference to religion was well known, and the twice-divorced and ethically compromised former Speaker of the House. Good choices, Sarah.
**If it's so tiresome, maybe she should stop.
^^I don't know why Sarah is looking for the Ten Commandments in courthouses when she can find them plastered prominently on roadside billboards all across this great nation. Maybe billboards aren't "public" enough for her?
***Let's face it: for Sarah, "fellow Americans" are the only part of "mankind" that counts.
^^^The claim about liberals and progressives may be slightly undercut by Sarah's lengthy quoting of Franklin Roosevelt's public prayer on the morning of D-Day in 1944, and her quoting of Martin Luther King. Apparently they don't make "iberals and progressives" like they used to.
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