EXTREME RIGHT WATCH
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To those who knew Palin, she was no ordinary hockey mom, but rather an evangelical foot soldier who spearheaded the [conservative Christian] movement’s takeover of local government. Her power base was the Wasilla Assembly of God, a Pentecostal mega-church where she was baptized and spent over 20 years as a member.

Most Pentecostal congregations are socially conservative, particularly those that are predominantly white, but Wasilla Assembly of God was in thrall to a radical Pentecostal trend once denounced by church authorities as heresy. Called the Third Wave, it was rooted in an explicitly anti-intellectual creation myth. According to the Third Wave’s founding father, William Branham, a rural Canadian preacher, Satan had sex with Eve and gave birth to Cain—the so-called “Serpent Seed.” “Through Cain came all the smart, educated people down to the antediluvian flood—the intellectuals, bible colleges,” Branham wrote. “They know all their creeds but know nothing about God.”

Despite opposition from inside the Assembly of God’s hierarchy, Third Wave congregations won droves of adherents by emphasizing charismatic displays of ecstatic release, including practices such as holy laughter (hysterical giggling that supposedly represents the spirit of God flowing through the bodies of believers) and drunkenness in the spirit, where worshippers emulate the experience of intoxication so melodramatically that Charles Bukowski would reel in embarrassment. Faith healing is also central to Third Wave theology; Todd Bentley, an influential Florida-based Third Wave pastor known for his tattoos, body piercings, and pseudo-punk attitude, once attempted to “explode” a man’s tumors by drop-kicking him in the chest. He also kicked an old woman in the face because, he said, “The Holy Spirit spoke to me.” One of Bentley’s mottoes is “Some people snort cocaine, others snort religion.”

Behind the Third Wave’s histrionics lies an aggressive brand of Dominionism focused on purging “demon influence” from entire geographic areas through prayer or more forceful means if necessary. Becky Fischer, a Third Wave youth pastor who gained fame as the anti-hero of the award-winning 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, urged pastors to indoctrinate an army of spiritual suicide bombers to seize control of the country. “I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam,” Fischer said in the documentary during an unguarded moment. “I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY MAX BLUMENTHAL

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