Chris Ray - September 21st, 2008 in Feature 0 votes Vote Up! Vote Down!

Apparently unsatisfied with his denomination’s current cache of craziness capital, CEO of the Assemblies of God George O. Wood (and yes, his title really is CEO) has fiercely criticized a Washington Times cartoon that makes light of Sarah Palin’s history of glossolalic indulgence. The Assemblies of God is a conservative Pentacostal denomination whose core doctrines include the belief that God’s greatest gift to you is proven by incomprehensible stammering, or as some like to mispronounce it, “speaking in tongues.”

The cartoon, which is only legitimately available to Washington Post subscribers, depicts Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin babbling nonsense into a cell phone with John McCain declaring that he has no idea what it means but that it gives him a “direct line to the Almighty!,” with the second panel showing a confused God on a cell phone telling an angel that he can’t understand the “dam’ right wing politician” on the other end.

I have categorized this article as a feature and not as news because there is no way for me to objectively report someone being so basely silly as George O. Wood is right now. The cartoon’s subject is obviously the play-acted piety of the religious right and has nothing to do with the practicing of speaking in tongues; the cartoon merely depicts glossolalia, and the fact that Wood has inferred slander from a frank depiction of his own beliefs says a lot about what he must think of the practice of speaking in tongues. It is a Charistmatic assertion that glossolalia (”the gift of tongues,” in certain circles) is a direct line with God, and it is a Charistmatic recognition that nobody really knows what any specific instance of glossolalia means qua language.

Are we seeing shades of the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons episode? I don’t think so. I doubt anyone is going to get too upset over the Christian Post’s harshest critique of the cartoon (”the cartoonist portrayed God as cranky, befuddled, a user of profanity and not omniscient”), or Wood’s whiney theological guess that since God “is multi-lingual, [Woods is] sure He doesn’t have problems understanding any prayers.” The cartoonist, Pat Oliphant, is still alive as far as I know. Pentacostalists might believe that God routinely demonstrates his existence not to cure disease or alleviate suffering, but to rile up excited, agitated crowds of pre-committed believers in moments of furious ecstasy, but I doubt that even they are any danger to the cartoonist.

So what is the danger? The danger is that the Washington Post, fearing for its advertising dollars, will kill the cartoon and take the cartoonist off their rolls. The danger is appeasement. The danger is treating any ridiculous religious superstition as if it were off-limits to even being mentioned, much less criticized, as if we’re supposed to act like the profound national interest in protecting the rights of inane babble trumps the freedom of speech or the principle of free inquiry.

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Tags: cartoons, free speech, Palin