Religionsarah palin waterboardingSarah PalinChristianity

Faithful America, Christian Online Community, Launches Petition Against Sarah Palin Following Waterboarding Remark

Christian Online Community Launches Petition Against Sarah Palin
Antonia Blumberg
By 

Reporter, HuffPost

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD - MARCH 08: Conservative pundit, television personality and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin speaks during the 41st annual Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord International Hotel and Conference Center on March 8, 2014 in National Harbor, Maryland. The conference, a project of the American Conservative Union, brings together conservative polticians, pundits and voters for three days of speeches and workshops. (Photo by T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images)
NATIONAL HARBOR, MD - MARCH 08: Conservative pundit, television personality and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin speaks during the 41st annual Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord International Hotel and Conference Center on March 8, 2014 in National Harbor, Maryland. The conference, a project of the American Conservative Union, brings together conservative polticians, pundits and voters for three days of speeches and workshops. (Photo by T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images)

Faithful America, an online Christian community, launched a petition on Monday denouncing Sarah Palin's recent remarks at a National Rifle Association meeting, which compared baptism to waterboarding.

At the NRA's "Stand And Fight" rally on Saturday the former Alaska governor said, "Enemies, who would utterly annihilate America, they who'd obviously have information on plots, to carry out Jihad. Oh, but you can't offend them, can't make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen. Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we'd baptize terrorists."

Faithful America's petition has received nearly 45,000 signatures, according to their website -- far above the initial goal of 15,000.

The petition reads:

For Christians, torture is not a joke or a political punchline, but a ghastly reminder of the suffering of Jesus upon the cross. By equating it with Holy Baptism -- the act by which we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection -- Sarah Palin is blasphemously twisting our faith into a weapon of hatred and violence. No media outlet should cover her remarks without reporting on how sincere Christians of all theological and political persuasions are appalled.

Palin defended her comments in a Facebook post on Monday, saying:

"Perhaps hypocritical folks who only want Freedom of Speech to apply to those who agree with their liberal agenda might want to consider that the evil terrorists who were the brunt of my one-liner would be the first to strip away ALL our rights if given the chance. That’s why we do whatever we can to prevent them from killing innocent people. And for that, we should NEVER apologize."

Religion writer Sarah Posner also expressed criticism of Palin's remarks in an article on Religion Dispatches. Posner questions Palin's proclaimed faith and descries the former governor's "blaspheming of a religious sacrament." Posner writes:

"In joking that torture was like a baptism, Palin revealed her view of evangelization as an act of force, not love, and her view of salvation as something one imposes on irredeemable enemies, who further prove their lesser worth by protesting and resisting it."

On their website, which professes to "reclaim Christianity from the religious right," Faithful America writes that their petition aims to set the record straight about baptism and torture.

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religionsarah palin waterboardingSarah PalinChristianity

Before You Go

1
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AP Photo/Pat Sullivan
"Go to Genesis chapter nine and you will find the death penalty clearly stated in Genesis chapter nine ... God ordains the death penalty!”
2
On Glen Beck, the savior:
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
"I praise God for men like Glen Beck and Matt Kibbe who are not afraid to speak the truth, who are like modern John the Baptist, crying out in the wilderness."
3
On going to the battlefield:
AP Photo/Pat Sullivan
"God has given you an anointing to go to the battlefield. And what's the battlefield? The marketplace. To go to the marketplace and occupy the land. To go to the marketplace and take dominion."
4
On evolution:
AP Photo/Pat Sullivan
"Evolution is one of the strongest tools of Marxism because if they can convince you that you came from a monkey, it’s much easier to convince you that God does not exist."
5
On Socialism and God:
AP Photo/Pat Sullivan
"Socialism requires that government becomes your God. That's why they have to destroy your concept of God. They have to destroy all your loyalties except loyalty to the government."
6
On the U.S. as a "Christian nation":
AP Photo/Pat Sullivan
"The president has the gall to tell us that this is not a Christian nation. The United States of American was formed to honor the word of God."
7
On Obama destroying God:
AP Photo/Pat Sullivan
"We have to unmask this man. This is a man that seeks to destroy all concept of God -- and I will tell you what, this is classical Marxist philosophy."
8
On the anointed ones:
AP Photo/Pat Sullivan
“The wealth of the wicked is stored for the righteous. And it is through the kings, anointed to take dominion, that that transfer of wealth is going to occur."
9
On Obama as a Muslim:
AP Photo/Pat Sullivan
“Barack Obama said: If the winds shift, I will side with the Muslims.”
10
On atheism and sexual abuse:
FreedomWorksAction/YouTube
"When there are no moral absolutes, [this] leads us to sexual immorality, leads us to sexual abuse, leads us to perversion and, of course, no hope."
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