Max Blumenthal visits Palin’s church, and discusses her endorsement by a latter-day Cotton Mather:

Muthee gained fame within Pentecostal circles by claiming that he defeated a local witch, Mama Jane, in a great spiritual battle, thus liberating his town from sin and opening its people to the spirit of Jesus. Muthee?s mounting stardom took him to Wasilla Assembly of God in May, 2005, where he prayed over Palin and called upon Jesus to propel her into the governor?s mansion ? and beyond. Muthee also implored Jesus to protect Palin from ?the spirit of witchcraft.? The video archive of that startling sermon was scrubbed from Wasilla Assembly of God?s website, but now it has reappeared.

Blumenthal has the whole video, but especially disturbing are these lines:

The second area whereby God wants us, wants to penetrate in our society is in the economic area. The Bible says that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. It’s high time that we have top Christian businessmen, businesswomen, bankers, you know, who are men and women of integrity running the economics of our nations. That’s what we are waiting for. That’s part and parcel of transformation. If you look at the — you know — if you look at the Israelites, that’s how they work. And that’s how they are, even today.

Shortly after delivering those words to the congregation, Muthee calls up Sarah Palin and blesses her political prospects. Palin never raises any objection to the anti-Semitic smears, nor does she show any objection to Muthee’s plea that she be free from “every form of witchcraft.”

Official Catholic League gasbag Bill Donohue responded to the discussion of this blessing by writing:

Witchcraft is a sad reality in many parts of Africa, resulting in scores of deaths in Kenya over the past two decades.

Really? Witchcraft is a reality? Anywhere at all?

As for those deaths, Muthee’s witchhunt may have been the greater danger:

[Mutthee's crusaders] set up round-the-clock prayer intercession and eventually, says the pastor ?the demonic influence was broken?, and [alleged witch] Mama Jane fled the town.

According to accounts of the witch-hunt circulated on evangelical websites, after Mutheee spoke out against Mama Jane many villagers demanded she be stoned.

Police raided her home and shot a pet python which was believed to be a demon.

Muthee,who said he became a pastor after “God spoke” to him in 1989, has frequently referred to this witch-hunt in his sermons as an example of the power of ?spiritual warfare?.

Just what we need in the White House. Sarah Palin and John McCain can exorcise the troubles from our failed economy by demonizing the Jews.

This isn’t the first brush between McCain and his pastors, Palin and her church, and antisemitism. McCain invested great effort in getting the endorsement of a Holocaust-denying preacher named John Hagee. Only when Hagee’s anti-Catholic statements came in for attack did McCain reject Hagee’s long-sought endorsement.

Palin had a good time while Muthee spouted rhetoric that wouldn’t be out of place in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and endorsed Holocaust-denier Pat Buchanan’s presidential run some time back. As the Jewish Journal of Greater LA points out, “Buchanan is anathema to the Jews. He is someone who has blamed Israel and American Jews for directing American foreign policy against American interests. He has spoken kindly of Adolph Hitler — who is not popular with Jews — and, well, this is going to be interesting.”

Then, just weeks before being named as John McCain’s VP-nominee, Palin attended another intriguing sermon:

Palin?s church, the Wasilla Bible Church, gave its pulpit over to a figure viewed with deep hostility by many Jewish organizations: David Brickner, the executive director of Jews for Jesus.

Palin?s pastor, Larry Kroon, introduced Brickner on Aug. 17, according to a transcript of the sermon on the church?s website.

?He?s a leader of Jews for Jesus, a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism,? Kroon said. ?

Brickner?s mission has drawn wide criticism from the organized Jewish community, and the Anti-Defamation League accused them in a report of ?targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.?

Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God’s “judgment of unbelief” of Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity.

“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 [Brickner's 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.”

Palin was in church that day, Kroon said?

And while her pastor warns against assuming she backed everything said, and she claims that “She and her family would not have been sitting in the pews of the church if those remarks were remotely typical,” it’s all a bit hard to swallow. How many antisemitic sermons does her church have to host before she takes action? Has she ever done anything in her own life to build ties to the Jewish community? Her spokesman insists that “she does not share the views [Brickner] expressed,” but what views does she hold?