We’ve got a fine gang of nuts coming up through the religious ranks right now. There are some real lunatics associated with Sarah Palin: she’s linked to her home-town priests, Ed Kalnin and Thomas Muthee, who are linked to Morningstar Ministries and Rick Joyner. These cranks have a plan.

Muthee is an international celebrity for his role in a series of documentary videos, seen by millions worldwide, that claim Christians can reduce crime, murder, traffic accidents, addiction, and environmental degradation by driving out, from cities and towns, demon spirits and accused witches.

I am most amused by the clip at that link in which Joyner complains about the unfair treatment Palin received from the press, because they jumped on every crazy little thing she said. The press largely missed her religious beliefs, possibly because they’re so far out there it’s hard to believe a candidate for high office believes in any of that nonsense. She’s a “third wave” Christian.

In an interview for a September 12, 2008 Religion News Service story Rick Joyner stated, “We are probably described as Third Wave. We have had a lot of influence from movements that I think are identified as Third Wave.” The Third Wave is a newly emergent tendency in Christianity, little more than two decades old, which now encompasses by some estimates five percent of the Earth’s population and has been promoted from Ted Haggard’s former Colorado Springs mega-church.

Third Wave doctrine teaches that Christians must reclaim the Earth from demons spirits which possess cities, towns, geographic territories, people, ethnic groups, and even family lines. The cleansing of those demons, and unbelievers, from Earth will usher in a Christian utopian age.

And then there’s Pastor Steven Anderson, the loon who has been praying for Obama’s death. There is a short compendium of some of the most hateful, looney things Anderson has said, and it’s not pretty. Homophobia and petty-minded vindictiveness are apparently not obstacles to claiming spiritual authority…they seem to be more like preliminary qualifications.

Let’s keep all of these nasty, crazy people out of political power, OK? Please?