Sarah Palin’s Pastor Problem: Palin Sat Through a Sermon, Just Two Weeks Ago, That May Hurt McCain with Jewish Voters

David Brickner may prove to be Sarah Palin’s Jeremiah Wright.

Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus, was a guest preacher just two weeks ago in Palin’s home church, and according to a detailed article in Politico, PALIN WAS THERE when Brickner went on a riff about God’s judgment being upon the Jews for not converting to Christianity.

Many Jews find fundamentalist Christians who try to convert them—or say that they are under the judgment of God for not converting to Christianity—grossly insensitive to the lessons of history and of the Holocaust. See, for example, this academic book, A Shadow of Glory: Reading the New Testament after the Holocaust (Routledge 2002).

And indeed, the reverend, in the sermon that Palin attended, condemned Israel as being under the “judgment of unbelief.”  

Here’s the reverend talking about terrorism in the sermon that Sarah Palin sat through:

“Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It’s very real. When [my son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can’t miss it.”

In other words, Brickner says that his son, while in Jerusalem, witnessed God’s judgment upon Israel for their unbelief, and that judgment was manifested when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem plowed a bulldozer through a score of cars, killing Israelis.

Got that?

Put simply, Brickner is saying that God kills Jews in Israel, or lets them be harmed, because too many of them are unbelievers. Their unbelief is a judgment upon them.

And Sarah Palin was there, hearing this.

Her reaction is not known.

Some will want to know her opinion of the Reverend Brickner’s sermon before November, and Palin’s answer could have an impact on how she is perceived by Jewish voters in swing states such as Florida, as well as by non-Jews sobered by the history of anti-semitism and the Holocaust, and thus naturally reluctant to put people in political power who might be sympathetic with the idea that God, for whatever reason, wants fewer Jews in the world. 

You can read the whole Politico article, and the quote in its full context here: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13098.html