Wasilla Assembly of God Church and its Tax Exemption Status Bears Closer Look

Wasilla Assembly of God Church in Wasilla, Alaska, and its pastor Ed Kalnins may prove to be a liability for the presumptive Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin in the same way that Rev. Wright was a liability for Democratic Candidate Barack Obama. Palin was baptized into the Wasilla Assembly of God Church at age 12 and worshiped there until 2002, according to SwampPolitics.com.

The Wasilla Assembly of God Church teachings are at issue because of their blatant political nature which dismisses half of the electorate as candidates for hellfire. The Huffington Post reported that Wasilla Assembly of God Church's pastor told his congregation that President Bush's critics may be banished to Hell. During the 2004 Presidential debates, the Wasilla Assembly of God Church's pastor said of John Kerry '... if you vote for this particular person, I question your salvation. I'm sorry. If every Christian will vote righteously, it would be a landslide every time."

Palin herself is in the limelight for mixing politics and religion by calling the Iraq War a task from God and suggesting that it is God's will that there be a new $30 million oil pipeline she advocated as governor. Her comments appear on a Palin church video here.

Palin's association with Wasilla Assembly of God Church and its unconventional teachings-such as the world is near its end and Alaska will be a refuge- may raise the usual questions about how a candidate's religious beliefs might influence his/her secular politics another notch or two. This questioning of a candidate's ability to separate the religious from the secular is neither new nor unique to Sarah Palin; it occurred in 1960 when John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic elected President and in 2004 when Senator Joe Lieberman, a member of the Jewish faith, entered the Presidential primaries.