It looks as though at least some of America’s Christians have finally had enough of Sarah Palin, who came out with this “joke” at the NRA convention.

“They obviously have information on plots to carry out jihad,” Palin said of terrorists. “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 baptize terrorists.”

The irony that an increasing number of Americans and non-Americans now consider the NRA themselves to a terrorist organisation is not lost here.

The word “blasphemy” is being used, and for once the word is appropriate. Even conservative Christian groups are now distancing themselves from these remarks.

The strongly social justice orientated “Faithful America” had this to say.

This is what we’ve come to in America: A former candidate for vice-president can equate torture and Holy Baptism, and one of the nation’s most powerful political lobbies erupts into cheers and applause. As usual, Palin’s remarks are already making international headlines, once again portraying Christianity as a religion of hatred and violence.

And this from Joe Carter of The Gospel Coalition:

Gov. Palin was attempting to appeal to the basest political populism nothing in her remarks could be construed as genuinely conservative by claiming that current U.S. counterterrorism policy is overly-tolerant and empathetic toward our enemies. Unfortunately, what Palin is proposing is a mixture of pagan ethics and civil deistic religion.

That last line says it all.

Palin, and many others on the Religious Right, are not and have never been Christian in any meaninful sense of the word. They practice what is at best a folk-religion which uses Christian symbolism in the most superficial of manners. At worst, it’s a much darker and more dangerous faith which has appropriated Christian symbols. Palin belongs to a sect that I’ve previously described as resembling a cross between the Manichean Heresy and Haitian Voudoun.

“Our assignment from God was to take down the foundations of The Great Babylon, the harlot over many waters, who supported the false systems of the world. God clearly showed us where we should go for our main prophetic act by revealing a large, brown stone formation, completely surrounded by walls of ice resembling a castle and shaped exactly like an idol of the Queen of Heaven! This seat of the Mother of the Universe was 20,000 feet high, and to get there we had to cross the ice fall, the most dangerous par of the Everest ascent, with no guide but Him and no help from anyone else other than the angels.”

OK, so far it reads like a particularly weird scenario for some RPG, perhaps a twisted version of Mage: The Ascension, or perhaps Call of Cthulhu run from a weirdly fundamentalist perspective. But apparently this was an account of a real “spiritual warfare” mission into the Himalayas.

It then gets a lot darker and more disturbing.

Within two weeks of the expedition, other things happened which I believe are also connected: the huge fire in Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation; an earthquake destroyed the basilica of Assisi, where the Pope had called a meeting of all world religions; a hurricane destroyed the infamous temple ‘Baal-Christ’ in Acapulco, Mexico; Princess Diana died, a representative of the British throne, to which Sir Edmund Hillary dedicated Mount Everest; and Mother Theresa died in India, one of the most famous advocates of Mary as Co-Redeemer.”

This isn’t Christianity. It’s a cross between Voodoo and the Manichean Heresy. And it’s not a fringe cult; they have their tentacles deeply embedded in American politics, and claim huge numbers of followers. Sarah Palin is one of them.

(Thanks to Making Light for the link)