posted June 21, 2010 05:21 PM         

Saint Sarah
To white evangelical women, Sarah Palin is a modern-day prophet, preaching God, flag, and family—while remaking the religious right in her own image.
Joshua Lott / Reuters-Corbis
Sarah Palin's pro-woman rallying cry is poised to transform the Christian right into a women's movement. Click the image above to see a photo gallery of how her following has become big business.
Another memoirist might prefer to keep such matters private, but Sarah Palin is not another memoirist. In Going Rogue: An American Life, Palin describes, perhaps for the first time in the history of political autobiography, a furtive trip to an out-of-state drugstore to obtain a do-it-yourself pregnancy test. This was in the fall of 2007, when the 43-year-old mother of four was governor of Alaska and began to notice “some peculiar yet familiar physical symptoms, like the smell of cigarettes making me feel more nauseated than usual.” So, while on business in New Orleans—at a time and in a place where her anonymity was still possible—Palin procured the kit. In the privacy of her hotel room, she “followed the instructions on the ... box. Slowly a pink image materialized on the stick.

“Holy geez!”

Palin has already overshared: nothing makes a person, let alone a politician, appear more vulnerable, more ordinary, and more unambiguously female than a scene in a bathroom where she pees on a stick. But then she defies a generation of pro-life activists who preached that the life of the fetus is sacred, no matter what an individual woman wants. For a split second, Palin—already at the limits of her time and energy—stops to consider the chaos another baby will create in her life. These are really less than ideal circumstances, she thinks. And then the inconceivable. I’m out of town. No one knows I’m pregnant. No one would ever have to know. Any woman who has faced a pregnancy test with hope or with dread can picture the governor sitting there, alone with her dilemma, certain that her future will change. We know, of course, how the story ends. Trig, diagnosed in utero with Down syndrome, was born just months before his mother’s vice presidential run.

At a breakfast in Washington, D.C., last month, Palin, wearing a rosarylike cross around her neck and a sparkly American flag lapel pin, told a version of the Trig story to 550 women who had paid at least $150 each to the Susan B. Anthony List, an organization devoted to supporting pro-life female politicians. When Trig was born, Palin recounted, “they lay him in my arms, and he just kind of melted right into my chest ... And it was just like he was saying, ‘See, God knows what he’s doing, and this is going to be good’ ... I tell you truly, Trig has been the best thing that has ever happened to me and the Palin family.” Around the room, women rose from their chairs, stamping their feet, clapping, and hollering. And when they all finally sat down, Palin smiled like a beauty queen and said, “Yes. Bless you.”

Let’s face it: the Trig story is a women’s story, the kind girlfriends share over coffee or in church. It has all the familiar elements of evangelical testimony: tribulation and dread; trust in God; and, finally, great blessings. Many Christian women loathe Palin, of course, and many men love her, but a certain kind of conservative, Bible-believing woman worships her. And it is these women Palin has been actively courting as she crisscrosses the country talking about Trig to women’s and pro-life organizations.

To millions of women, Palin’s authenticity makes her a sister in arms—“Sisters!” she called out in Washington, as if at a revival—a beautiful, fearless, principled fighter who shares their struggles. To a smaller number, she is a prophet, ordained by God for a special role in the cosmic battle against the forces of evil. A 2009 profile in the Christian magazine Charisma compared Palin to the Old Testament’s Queen Esther, who saved her people, in this case the Jews, from annihilation.

Palin has been antagonizing women on the left of late by describing herself as a “feminist,” a word she uses to mean the righteous, Mama Bear anger that wells up when one of her children is attacked in the press or her values are brought into question. But while leftist critics continue to shred Palin as a cynical, shallow, ill-informed opportunist, and new polls show her unpopularity rating to be at an all-time high—53 percent—Palin is now playing to her strengths. Even if she never again seeks elected office, her pro-woman rallying cry, articulated in the evangelical vernacular, together with the potent pro-life example of her own family, puts Palin in a position to reshape and reinvigorate the religious right, one of the most powerful forces in American politics. The Christian right is now poised to become a women’s movement—and Sarah Palin is its earthy Jerry Falwell.

Already Palin has shown herself to be a kingmaker (as well as a queenmaker). Two of her fellow “mama grizzlies,” as she calls them—Carly Fiorina, the Senate candidate in California, and Nikki Haley, the gubernatorial candidate in South Carolina—benefited from her endorsements last week, winning and placing first in their races, respectively. (Haley’s triumph is especially remarkable since her campaign was beset by last-minute allegations of marital infidelity, which she denied.) “She is going to be able to raise a lot of money for people she wants to support, and she will make a big difference in the primaries,” says Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

JONATHAN ALTER: Ladies' Night »
Abortion, the cause around which the religious right was built two generations ago, seems to be reemerging as a potent political issue as well (though the oil spill, terrorism, and the global economy may still overshadow it in the voting booth). Eleven states have passed anti-abortion laws since the beginning of the year, and 370 bills have been introduced in state legislatures, according to the Guttmacher Institute. American women are more likely to call themselves “pro-life” (48 percent, up from 42 percent in 2001, according to Gallup), and while young white evangelicals are more accepting than their parents of gay marriage, they’re less open-minded on abortion. Seventy percent want more restrictions, compared with compared with 55 percent of those in the older generation, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The religious right has always had female leaders, of course—Phyllis Schlafly and Beverly LaHaye, to name two—but since the Supreme Court upheld Roe v. Wade in 1973, its most visible political brokers have been men. Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson used their media megaphones to preach a “family values” agenda—and then supported candidates who upheld their pro-marriage, antigay, and pro-life views. Their great triumph, the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, was followed by decades of acrimonious public debate about abortion, and political operatives soon discovered that no issue motivated voters more. “Pro-life folks on the ground are the most loyal; they’re worth their weight in gold,” says Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List. In 2004 Karl Rove called in 4 million evangelical Christian votes to help George W. Bush narrowly win a second term. And while women have long been active, even zealous, foot soldiers in family-values causes, they have not until now been passionate about their representatives on the national stage. Christian women may have given money to Schlafly, but they didn’t want to be like her.

But the culture was changing, and by 2006 the religious right was in disarray. Falwell would die the following year, and Dobson and Robertson were widely regarded as dinosaurs. Even evangelical Christians, for whom abortion remained a priority, said they didn’t like being yelled at: many turned their focus to global poverty and the environment. At the same time, as Harvard professor R. Marie Griffith writes in her book God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission, conservative Christian women—though they would not have called themselves feminists—were grappling with changing realities in their own world: too many were divorced and working outside the home to wholeheartedly embrace the traditional female identity of submissive wife and mother. Conservative churches fought and split over questions of women’s leadership roles. “Evangelical ideals of Christian womanhood ... perceptibly shifted ... as notions of submission were modified by other notions of female occupation and female power,” she writes. In 2008, 28 percent of born-again Christian women voted for Barack Obama (Kerry had gotten 23 percent in 2004), a sign of their dissatisfaction with the status quo. That year, Obama was, ironically, the “values” candidate. John McCain made evangelicals suspicious, and Palin, playing it safe, remained mostly mute about her faith.

With her new faith-based message, Palin gathers up the Christian women that traditional feminism has left behind. In her speech to the SBA List last month, Palin derided the old feminism as a relic of “the faculty lounge at some East Coast women’s college, right?”—even as she wrapped the label around herself, channeling the pioneer wives who “made sacrifices to carve out a living and a family out of the wilderness.” Hers is a “mom of faith” movement, a “mom uprising.” It’s an emotional appeal, unfettered by loyalty to the broader policy agenda of traditional feminism. (Palin will praise suffragettes, abolitionists, and Margaret Thatcher, but not the early feminists who arguably paved the way for the 96 Republican women running for House seats in 2010.) The women who follow Palin will fight against Roe—and support adoption and prenatal health clinics—but they aren't generally focused on birth control, sex education, or gender discrimination. They shrug at the agonies of the overeducated moms who feel forced to choose between work and family (no one had to do that on the farm), and they refute the idea that to succeed in the world a woman must look and act like a man. (“That Supreme Court nominee—I can’t relate to her at all,” Ruthie McIntosh, one of those who jumped to her feet at the Palin breakfast in Washington last month, told me.) These Christians seek a power that allows them to formally acquiesce to male authority and conservative theology, even as they assume increasingly visible roles in their families, their churches, their communities, and the world.

Palin shows them a path through this thicket of contradictions. “Within these circles, there is very much an ideal Christian woman model,” explains Griffith. “It’s an image that blends this kind of submissive, pretty, aw-shucks demeanor with a fiery power, a spiritual warfare.” Palin may say she’s a pugnacious jock primed to take on the big boys, but her family, beauty-queen figure, and glossy hair are her calling cards.

When asked why she loves Sarah Palin, a conservative Christian woman will point you to Proverbs 31. There, you’ll find a wife and mother who adores her husband, works the fields, rises before dawn, “makes her arms strong,” feeds the poor, helps the needy, has a head for business, and wears beautiful clothes. No exhausted careerist is she: the Proverbs 31 woman laughs easily; her children are happy. Christian women have long puzzled in their Bible study groups over how she does it, and in Palin they finally have an example—not just for themselves, but for their daughters.

“God gives us gifts and talents and abilities, and [Palin] is kind of modeling that it’s OK to use those,” says Lynette Kittle, 52, a mother of four grown daughters, who recently traveled more than a thousand miles from her home in Colorado Springs, Colo., to hear Palin speak. “I know there’s a saying, ‘You can’t have it all,’ but in some ways you can.”

Traditional feminists see Palin’s feminism as a joke. “It’s such a contrivance,” says Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of North America. “There’s nothing there. I don’t think Sarah Palin is going to change the national scene on choice or on feminism. Her rallying cry is pretty empty if she’s against women’s rights.”

It is impossible to know what Palin really believes about God, but having been raised in conservative evangelical churches in Alaska, she is fluent in evangelical language and culture. Public Christian prayer makes many Americans squeamish, but in evangelical circles it is the air they breathe. Christian women pray for each other, their families, and their leaders, not just in church but in casual groups, online, and in private all the time. Vicki Garza, who owns a marketing firm in Dallas, was so inspired by Palin’s presence in the 2008 campaign—“something in me was rekindled,” she says—that she built a Web site called PrayFor SarahPalin.com, which at its height received 24,000 visitors a month.

Like many evangelicals, Garza believes a great cosmic battle is underway for the soul of America and that Palin has been singled out by God for leadership: “The anointing on her is so strong,” she says. Assaults on Palin by the press only strengthen Garza’s conviction, for as any Christian knows, martyrs most deserve to gain God’s kingdom. “She’s just fearless,” Garza says. “Jesus said, ‘They persecuted me; they’ll persecute you.’ ”

To her Christian audiences, Palin talks about her own life in terms of mission and destiny. She was the keynote speaker at a Women of Joy conference in April, a convention of 16,000 Christian women who traveled from three dozen states to Louisville, Ky., and paid at least $79 per ticket for a weekend of praise, song, and prayer. Upon mounting the stage, Palin immediately thanked her “prayer warriors” for the “prayer shield” they built around her. She quoted from Proverbs 3—“Trust in the Lord with all your heart ... and he will make straight your paths.” And then she connected herself with Esther. She was explaining the meaning of the Jewish queen’s heroism to her 9-year-old daughter Piper, she said. “[Esther] was out there on the stage, wondering if she’d have the opportunity to be chosen to really help change the world.”

Behind the Christian-military rhetoric, though, is a theology that’s generic, Griffith and other scholars say. (Though the video clip that made the rounds during the campaign of Palin being prayed over by an African minister gave foes on the left the willies, most churchgoing conservative evangelicals were completely unfazed.) In her speeches, Palin never damns anyone to hell. She never talks about sin: discussing her daughter Bristol, accidentally pregnant at 17, she talks about responsibility. When Palin writes about her born-again experience, she talks not about an encounter with Jesus or the Holy Spirit, as so many evangelicals do, but of a sudden awareness of the awesomeness of creation. “Looking around at the incredible creation that is Alaska—the majestic peaks and midnight sun, the wild waters and teeming wildlife—I could practically see and hear and feel God’s spirit reflected in everything in nature.” Palin refers often to Ronald Reagan in her speeches, and even critics concede there’s something Reaganesque about the way she approaches faith. It’s easy. It’s optimistic. It’s future-oriented. “She seems like an ordinary Christian woman who has done extraordinary things,” says Georgetown history professor Michael Kazin.

For all her apparent authenticity, though, Palin’s real motivations remain hidden. (She declined to be interviewed for this article.) The Trig story, moving in its first hearing, turns discomfiting and self-serving upon repetition. Further, Palin’s lack of expertise on policy questions—and her apparent lack of curiosity—bothers not just her critics but even some of her most devoted fans. “I would have preferred for her to stay on as governor and maybe get involved in the policy debate,” says Ruthie McIntosh.

posted June 22, 2010 09:56 AM         

if she had been a poor, abused woman would it be so wonderful for her to bring this extra-dependent being into the world? even if given up for adoption, who volunteers to nurture downs babies when they could take on a healthy one? and if she kept him what would a physically abusive father do to him?

another important point of the story above, to me, is that though she had the choice available, ms palin chose to have the baby. which PROVES that the RIGHT to abort does not force anyone to do so, or make it the "easy choice". most of us actually make the same choice she did. but for those who KNOW they would be rotten mothers, for whatever reason, or that the child will need more care than they can provide or anyone will adopt...it is pretty crucial that the choice remain in place.

after all unlike cats we do not EAT undesirable infants. that is what "nature" prescribes for the underdeveloped, survivally challenged offspring of the world.

posted June 22, 2010 12:14 PM         

Newsweek, bless its little money-bleeding heart, is trying desperately to make a buck by putting Sarah Palin on its cover.

The story starts off innocently enough. A few paragraphs in, Palin's main sin seems to be that she's honest and uncharacteristically open about her life. In so doing the rest of America, especially women, are able to identify with her. Oh, the horror.

The author, Lisa Miller, begrudgingly admits that Palin's experience with Trig does indeed strike a chord:

Let’s face it: the Trig story is a women’s story, the kind girlfriends share over coffee or in church. It has all the familiar elements of evangelical testimony: tribulation and dread; trust in God; and, finally, great blessings.

"Let's face it." In other words, "Like it or not, it's a great story. I guess. I hate to admit it. Stupid Sarah Palin and her great story. Why couldn't she have a really depressing story?"

Lisa also takes a backhanded swipe at the fact that Palin shares her story with others, but I won't go into that for fear of losing my cool.

To millions of women, Palin’s authenticity makes her a sister in arms—“Sisters!” she called out in Washington, as if at a revival—a beautiful, fearless, principled fighter who shares their struggles.

So a feminist calling her fellow females "sisters" reminds Lisa of a revival meeting? That's weird. Seems to me that that term has been a part of the feminist vocabulary for quite some time.

The idea here is to turn people off to Palin's message by suggesting that it goes along with religious extremism. It's an exercise in branding. An exercise they need to partake in because Palin's message resonates. It's effective. And it is motivating a whole lot of conservative women who finally have a prominent role model.

To a smaller number, she is a prophet, ordained by God for a special role in the cosmic battle against the forces of evil. A 2009 profile in the Christian magazine Charisma compared Palin to the Old Testament’s Queen Esther, who saved her people, in this case the Jews, from annihilation.

Do you really want to go there? As for Esther, I always thought the Deborah story was more interesting. Deborah had to kick into action a guy named Barak. How's that for irony?

Lisa does point out a few encouraging bits of information:

Eleven states have passed anti-abortion laws since the beginning of the year, and 370 bills have been introduced in state legislatures, according to the Guttmacher Institute. American women are more likely to call themselves “pro-life” (48 percent, up from 42 percent in 2001, according to Gallup), and while young white evangelicals are more accepting than their parents of gay marriage, they’re less open-minded on abortion. Seventy percent want more restrictions, compared with compared with 55 percent of those in the older generation, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Nothing to add to that except for "Yay!"

Most of the rest of the article is pretty harmless. It continues the branding and goes through some history. I even agree with some of it.

This sentence is rather confusing:

It’s an emotional appeal, unfettered by loyalty to the broader policy agenda of traditional feminism. Palin will praise suffragettes, abolitionists, and Margaret Thatcher, but not the early feminists who arguably paved the way for the 96 Republican women running for House seats in 2010.

Um, weren't the suffragettes the earliest feminists? And I should point out that early feminists were pro-life. That was a part of their policy agenda, as it is Palin's. Lisa unwittingly makes the point that feminism today is often seen as synonymous with liberalism. And since Palin does not embrace liberal policies, she is not seen as embracing feminism's policy agenda.

The women who follow Palin will fight against Roe—and support adoption and prenatal health clinics—but they aren't generally focused on birth control, sex education, or gender discrimination. They shrug at the agonies of the overeducated moms who feel forced to choose between work and family (no one had to do that on the farm), and they refute the idea that to succeed in the world a woman must look and act like a man.

I should point out that Palin herself supports birth control.

As a kid it always confused me, the idea that for a woman to succeed she had to act like a man. It's one of the reasons I found it hard to relate to prominent feminists. Wouldn't it be better to succeed as a woman? Isn't that the whole point?

Palin may say she’s a pugnacious jock primed to take on the big boys, but her family, beauty-queen figure, and glossy hair are her calling cards.

Randy Reudrich would beg to differ. Way to completely dismiss her accomplishments and write her off as a beauty queen, Lisa. How very sexist of you.

I'm a conservative Christian woman. I don't think I've ever brought up Proverb 31 with regards to Sarah Palin, although I'm sure others have. However, I cannot disagree with the larger point:

When asked why she loves Sarah Palin, a conservative Christian woman will point you to Proverbs 31. There, you’ll find a wife and mother who adores her husband, works the fields, rises before dawn, “makes her arms strong,” feeds the poor, helps the needy, has a head for business, and wears beautiful clothes. No exhausted careerist is she: the Proverbs 31 woman laughs easily; her children are happy. Christian women have long puzzled in their Bible study groups over how she does it, and in Palin they finally have an example—not just for themselves, but for their daughters.

"God gives us gifts and talents and abilities, and [Palin] is kind of modeling that it’s OK to use those,” says Lynette Kittle, 52, a mother of four grown daughters, who recently traveled more than a thousand miles from her home in Colorado Springs, Colo., to hear Palin speak. “I know there’s a saying, ‘You can’t have it all,’ but in some ways you can.”

That's one part of the article I have to begrudgingly agree with. Sarah Palin is a first. Just as Hillary Clinton was a role model for women who tended Left, Sarah Palin is a role model for women who tend Right. It's no different than the example that Barack Obama has set by being the first black man to occupy the Oval Office. It's proof that it's possible. It opens doors for others who may have thought that those doors were sealed shut. Nothing wrong with that.

But, in the end, Lisa manages to drift back into this kind of territory:

For all her apparent authenticity, though, Palin’s real motivations remain hidden. (She declined to be interviewed for this article.) The Trig story, moving in its first hearing, turns discomfiting and self-serving upon repetition. Further, Palin’s lack of expertise on policy questions—and her apparent lack of curiosity—bothers not just her critics but even some of her most devoted fans.

Ah, cynicism at its finest. The Left cannot wrap its head around the idea that Palin might be sincere, because so many of them are not. She can't possibly be trying to reach out and help others with her message of what she has gone through, it must be all about staking claim to a people group. They project their own character onto her and question her "real motivations." She only appears to be authentic. What's she really up to?

As for her "lack of curiosity" and policy expertise, you just keep on repeating those worn-out memes.

A few more thoughts:

Early feminists were pro-life. If Sarah Palin is doing anything, she's reclaiming their banner and making it acceptable again for a powerful woman to be pro-life. This is part of what the Left feared when Palin burst onto the scene in 2008. For a long time they had hijacked the feminist label and reinterpreted it to stand for only their particular brand of feminism, aka, liberalism. Palin has opened the feminist label up again and made it more inclusive.

At a few points in Lisa's article, she almost articulates this herself. In fact, there seems to be an underlying fear that Palin's message might actually be reaching out to women in the middle. That "gray area" that Palin's supposedly claiming for the "Religious Right." On that point she's not entirely wrong. The glowy cover and the Religious Right theme may be an attempt to mitigate that effect. Again, branding. Look out gray-area ladies, you're going to be identified with Jerry Falwell.

Just in case anyone does have the crazy idea Palin's message is for political show, I want to call your attention to a little speech from November of 2007. According to Bob Lynn, Sarah Palin was the first sitting Governor in Alaska's history to attend the Alaska Right to Life "Proudly Pro-Life Dinner." Her words at that event ring especially poignant in retrospect because she was pregnant with Trig at the time, though nobody knew about it yet.

Excerpts:

I serve a God who creates and cherishes life and I believe, from the core of my being, that he has created everyone for a good purpose and that we have a destiny from the very beginning. So I do cherish and I will defend innocent life. As a woman, as a mother, as an Alaskan, as your governor, I will protect and serve the future of Alaska – your children – both born and (those) yet to be born.

I’m not going to judge or condemn anyone. Everyone has a different style about getting their word and beliefs out there. I’m just not wired to do that. I am not calloused about the issue of unplanned pregnancy. I sympathize and I empathize with those who are in that situation.

Someone in less than ideal circumstances finds out they are pregnant and they think, "Oh no, in an instant, my plans are ruined, my dreams are broken."

I’m not calloused to that. In fact, I understand. So I want to help and encourage those who are in that situation. But helping and encouraging is really hard in our culture, because our culture places too little value on honor and commitments and selflessness…

posted June 22, 2010 01:31 PM         

i am pro-life too, including the lives of women who have been raped, or who recognize their inability to raise a child BEFORE they ruin that child's life, or whose child will be so disadvantaged PHYSICALLY as to be unraisable by them and unadoptable by other...or those whose lives may be lost just carrying and delivering a child.

downs babies are no cross to bear. they demand more attention money and care but anyone who has known one will tell you they are a GIFT. so i don't really see her having trig as a "sacrifice" or "risk"..nor was it particularly heroic of her.

the article actually seemed to me to be saying the left has failed to take her seriously enough. i would have thought you would appreciate that, jwhop.

posted June 22, 2010 01:44 PM         

I would think...based on what you say on this thread..that you would be a big fan and supporter of Sarah Palin.

Hahaha , leftists take Sarah Palin very seriously katatonic. That's the reason they whine, screech, scream and shriek in unision every time they see or hear her name mentioned.

"Establishment Republicans", aka RINOS, are taking Sarah Palin very seriously too. They know they're on her hit list when she campaigns for candidates to oppose them.

posted June 23, 2010 11:11 AM         

They've had their lips firmly glued to the ass of Karl Marx since the mid 19th Century.

To know Marx, one knows all one needs to know about leftists. They just keep playing the same worn out record over and over.

Socialism has never worked anywhere it's been tried. It didn't work in the past, it's not working now and it's a catastrophe for every nation and people who permit Socialists to come to power and implement their regressive Marxist Socialist ideology.

Emanuel is not the problem in the administration. The idiot Marxist Socialist sitting in the Oval Office and the other Socialist idiots he's surrounded himself with...are the problem...not that I'm sticking up for Emanuel.

Nevertheless, Emanuel probably will leave after the midterm elections.

posted June 23, 2010 04:08 PM         

I agree wholeheartedly, Kat.

Well said.

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We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique. --Benjamin Jowett

posted June 24, 2010 12:39 PM         

What do we do with all of the unwanted babies that are born then? Adoption is tens of thousands of dollars, and the ones that the majority wants are the healthy cherubic babies. How do we care for those human beings that aren't that description? The foster system can only handle so many. How many emotionally scarred human beings can one society handle? I know not having sex is the best way to eliminate those unwanted babies. Humans have been biologically able to reproduce at teenaged years for a long time, however society has changed so quickly, that our bodies haven't caught up yet. Urges are a hard thing to overcome, especially at that tender age.

So do we distribute birthcontrol across the board? Force people to take it? How does that allow for personal freedom of families?