Sarah Palin Rejects Separation of Church and State

Back in 2007 I had a post debunking John McCain’s claim that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. This is an area where he agreed with his 2008 running mate. Steven Benen reports that Sarah Palin has made this and several other similar mistakes.  She believes that America needs to get back to its Christian roots and rejected any notion that “God should be separated from the state.” She believes that the Founding Fathers, who promoted the principle of separation of church and state, were opposed to one of their  most important ideas.

Palin also suggested that suggests religious people necessarily also reject separation of church in state. Actually it has often been religious people who understood the importance of separation of church and state to guarantee their right to worship as they wished.

Benen commented:

The amusing aspect of this is the notion that the United States would return to its roots with support for National Day of Prayer observances. That’s backwards — Thomas Jefferson and James Madison explicitly rejected state-sponsored prayer days. I’ll look forward to the conservative explanation of how the Founding Fathers were godless socialists.

I also can’t wait to hear how right-wing voices who want smaller government believe it’s appropriate for the federal government to issue decrees encouraging private American citizens to engage in worship.

But far less amusing is the fact that Palin and others of her radical ilk reject any notion that “God should be separated from the state.” It’s the 21st century, for crying out loud. There are some countries that endorse Palin’s worldview and intermix God and government — Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan under Taliban rule come to mind — but they’re generally not countries the United States tries to emulate.

The separation of church and state has long been a concept that all Americans could embrace, and has served as a model for nations around the world to follow. For Palin to publicly denounce this bedrock American principle suggests she might actually be getting worse…

If anyone this conspicuously unintelligent has ever sought national office, I can’t think of who he/she is.

Personally I don’t find any of this surprising considering how Palin ignored the separation of church and state as Governor of Alaska.

Update: Crooks & Liars has video along with a discussion of Palin’s association with the Prayer Warriors.