Sarah Palin: God's Instrument

Sarah Palin believes that she has a mission from God to channel Ronald Reagan and his conservative message. That is the central fact one has to draw from her book Going Rogue: An American Life.

It can hardly be a coincidence that An American Life is also the title of Ronald Reagan's own autobiography. Palin is presumptuous enough to put her American life and her book right up there on the pedestal with Reagan's. But she should have at least noted the use of the title of Reagan's book, just to avoid the charge of plagiarism. If it is a coincidence, she would claim it is just the hand of providence at work. As she says “I don't believe in coincidences.”

Sarah Palin opened herself to this kind of mission when she, early on, gave herself to God. At a youth Bible camp, she says “I made a conscious decision that summer to put my life in my Creator's hands and trust him as I sought my life's path.” That is the commitment to God's will of a very religious person.

In return for this commitment, she feels the hand of God upon her in a very special way. She quotes Jeremiah and then explicitly applies it to herself: “For I know the plans I have for you. Declares the Lord. Plans for peace and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. When you call upon me I will hear you, when you search for me you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart.” “I knew” she says, “that what still stirred passion in me was the desire to make a positive difference for others, not just in my family and community but the wider world as well.”

After losing her race for lieutenant governor, she renews her commitment to go and be what God wants her to be in the community and the wider world. She writes in her journal: “let me not become disconnected from you, Lord.... let there be a connecting string between you and me, so I can fly high and safe as you've created all people to do. With that string, I will go where you want me to go, I'll be what you want me to be. Thank you for your grace.”

The connection between Sarah Palin's God and Ronald Reagan's agenda is quite explicit. She says “I believed – and still do – that every person has a destiny, a reason for being. So Reagan's sense of national purpose resonated with me.” She ties her reason for being to his sense of national purpose.

Note that Palin's religion is not what we think of as Christian. There is no reference to Christianity in the references to God in the book. There is no sin, suffer and repent; no hell-fire and damnation or heavenly reward; no Jesus is Lord. This is strange because that is the tradition in which she was raised.

Palin does not preach in the common sense of that word. She does not proselytize nor try to convince others to follow her and her commitment. However, Palin's religion is not passive. There is a call to God-directed action. We are supposed to go through the doors of opportunity that Providence opens for us.

What she does preach is that those doors of opportunity are opened by individual initiative and the market system. They are opened by implementing and sticking to the commonsense conservatism of Ronald Reagan.

Throughout the book, Palin endlessly repeats, and blatantly preaches, the Reagan mantra of rugged individualism, free-market economics and a strong national defense. Her faith in Ronald Reagan and his policies is akin to her faith in God.

At the end of the book and after losing the election, Sarah Palin ends with the prayer and comment: “God, thank you. Thank you for your faithfulness … always seeing us through .. I don't know if this chapter is ending or just beginning, but you do, so I hand it over to you again. Thanks for letting me do that.” “Then I thank our Lord for every single thing we've been through that year. I believed there was purpose in it all.”

That purpose is to spread the gospel of Ronald Reagan.