Sarah Palin has been busy fear mongering over "death panels," but she’s ignored that her version of religion has some death panels of its own. And they like to gloat about the results.

Palin’s ignorant concepts are based on the misunderstanding and misinterpretation of articles written by Dr Ezekiel Emmanuel, about which  Dr Emmanuel, a National Institutes of Health bioethicist, has explicitly stated:

I was examining two different, abstract philosophical positions to see what they might offer in the context of redoing the health-care system and trying to reduce resource consumption in health care. It’s as abstractly philosophical as you can get on a practical question. I qualified it in 27 different ways, saying it wasn’t my view….

Dr Emanuel who has spent his career opposing euthanasia, received multiple awards for his efforts to improve end of life care. Dr. Emanuel told TIME Magazine:

No one who has read what I have done for 25 years would come to the conclusions that have been put out there.

But Sarah Palin’s  sect of Christianity, part of the New Apostolic Reformation, is very clear and proud about their work praying against the people they have judged and found lacking, including Mother Theresa and government officials. Leah Burton at theopalinism.com likens these prayer groups to death panels.

Founded by C. Peter Wagner, the NAR firmly believes in intercessionary or imprecatory prayers which are used to cast out perceived evil and call down misfortune, death and destruction on perceived enemies. Scholar Bruce Wilson of Talk2Action explains how these prayers are used:

During the 2008 election, and during the election would-be theocrats suggested praying for John McCain’s death. In 2007, former Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention Wiley Drake called for imprecatory payer against employees of Americans United For The Separation of Church and State. Then, in April 2009, a former US Navy chaplain called for prayers for the death of AU head the Reverend Barry Lynn and Military Religious Freedom Foundation Founder Mikey Weinstein.

Not to be outdone, On January 19th, 2009 (Martin Luther King Day), a day before the inauguration of President Barack Obama, Christian Identity leader Pastor Pete Peters declared an elaborate imprecatory prayer calling down the wrath of God on Obama’s upcoming inauguration and the subsequent celebration.

Mary Glazier is  one of the Prophets of the NAR’s inner circle of leadership, the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders, and the Alaska state leader of the U.S. Strategic Prayer Network. Glazier tells this story:

…there was a twenty-four year old woman that God began to speak to about entering into politics.  She became a part of our prayer group out in Wasilla.  Years later, became the mayor of Wasilla. And last year was elected Governor of the state of Alaska. Yes!  Hallelujah!  At her inauguration she dedicated the state to Jesus Christ. Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!

That was circa 1989; Palin remained close with Glazier through at least early 2008, according to Charisma magazine. In 1995, while Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Mary Glazier’s prayer group focused their faith-based hate beam on someone they didn’t feel deserved to live. 

In 1995, Mary mobilized a prayer network for Alaska’s prisons and began experiencing spiritual warfare as never before. She had received word that a witch had applied for a job as chaplain of the state’s prison system……Mary recalls, "As we continued to pray against the spirit of witchcraft, her incense altar caught on fire, her car engine blew up, she went blind in her left eye, and she was diagnosed with cancer."

Ultimately, the witch fled to another state for medical treatment. Soon after, revival visited every prison in Alaska.

At the women’s correctional facility in Anchorage alone, 55 of 60 inmates found Christ. "Ask largely," Mary says. "Intercessory prayer is making a major difference in North America."

The website witchvox.com shows 217 adults, 10 children and 19 military who openly identify as Pagans, neo-pagans,  or witches in Alaska, based on registration at the website. At least two own shops that serve their faith, and 10 are clergy. Do these people deserve to be prayed upon in the hopes that misfortune befalls them simply because Palin’s religious pals don’t like their belief systems?

NAR’s world view is that their kind of Christianity must claim everywhere–every town, city, county, state and country–for their version of Christ and they attempt do this by "casting out demons." The concept of demons include followers of non-Christian religions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. Jews are viewed as convertible. Catholics, members of one of the oldest sects of Christianity, are viewed with suspicion as papist idolators, though handy to have at anti-reproductive rights protests.

Palin, called a prayer warrior by various evangelical publications, has been prayed over not only by Mary Glazier but by Thomas Muthee, East African Director of the Spiritual Warfare Network who famously rebuked witchcraft while visiting Sarah Palin at the Wasilla Assembly of God Church in 2005.

In the 1997 when Muthee was one of the board members of the World Prayer Center International, one of Muthee’s disciples, Ana Mendez–the special task coordinator for WPCI– organized a spiritual warfare expedition to the Himalayas and later claimed that the prayers of the tour group may have helped kill Mother Theresa.

So while Sarah Palin spreads falsehoods about health care reform, her own spiritual reformers have been busy with faith-fueled death panels of their own.