In response to my post about the Oliphant cartoon mocking Palin for speaking in tongues, reader “price of liberty” makes two points worthy of discussion:

“We have a double standard: Its ok to make fun of the religion of Obama(or the fact that someone doesn’t believe him), but its not ok to make fun of Sarah because she might be pentacostal.”

Exactly. Anyone who defended Obama from the attacks on the sincerity of his faith (as I did), has an equal obligation to defend Palin from this cartoon.

“Some Christians like my self feel that some pentacostals are not telling the truth about there Glossolalia experiences and are not of the holy spirit. Sometimes I feel like those that believe they spoke in tongues are mocking us when they describe it, and get upset when sane people want to test the spirits to see if it was indeed from God.”

It’s impossible to know about the absolute genuineness of someone’s speaking in tongues experience — just as it’s impossible to know whether a Christian is faking when he describes being saved, or a Catholic is faking when they claims to believe in transubstantiation, etc. In interpersonal relations, it’s an easy call: just assume they’re telling the truth and go about your business. Most religious believers, I feel, are sincere in their descriptions of their own spiritual experiences. And those who aren’t — well, they’ll get their ultimate rewards eventually. I have better things to do than hunt out the frauds.
But politics admittedly poses a dilemma: we’re supposed to be sniffing out fakery in our politicians, in general. And the more the candidates offer their faith as a political asset, the more tempting it is to apply traditional modes of scrutiny.
My view, though, is that faith is simply in a different category — that we need to give politicians the benefit of the doubt about their personal faith experiences, at least until they try to impose it on other people. And unless I missed something, Sarah Palin has not tried to force the rest of us to speak in tongues. For the same reason — i.e. we don’t really know the sincerity of a politician’s faith — we shouldn’t make that a major factor in our vote.