Consider yourself highly commended!
As someone who has lived for many years in Minnesota and in Iowa, and even occasionally spoken with Dutch Reformed churchmembers on occasion, may I venture to comment?
Pella is the original center of the Dutch immigration to Iowa, and it's much closer to major statewide media (i.e., the Des Moines Register and Des Moines TV stations) than a similar event would be in other key Dutch Reformed communities such as Orange City or Sioux Center.
I hadn't known that Pella was the original center of Dutch immigration to Iowa, but I do know it is fairly close to Des Moines (50 miles or so). So if this is true, it is a brilliant example of Sarah's famous "retail" politicking at the small-town level while not denying access to the closest thing Des Moines has to MSM.
I think this is a clear effort by Palin to present herself as the conservative Christian candidate for a constituency that can do her a great deal of good, but which will need some serious convincing due to the unfortunate issues with her daughter's pregnancy, as well as due to her Pentecostal theology.
This is true of Iowa, in particular, more than other states: some will recall that in 1988, Pat Robertson finished in 2nd(!!) in the GOP primaries in Minnesota, sending shock waves throughout the establishment. Iowa is dominated by the Dutch Reformed, who value Christianity, but through the lens of heavy scholastic learning. They will want to see the Palin is "safe" theologically.
Let's just say that with a strong history of women's activism in both conservative and liberal churches (think of the roles of Dutch Reformed conservative women like Laurie Vanden Heuvel, a key opponent of the ERA ratification in Iowa, as well as Gertrude Hoeksema and Fredrika Pronk in their own smaller denominations), there won't be any bias against Palin's gender, and perhaps even some strong advocacy of putting a conservative woman into political power.
It has often been my observation that the women within Evangelical and similar households have long been "the power behind the throne" -- I would not be surprised to find that they identify Sarah as a kindred spirit. "Rugged individualism" and all that.
The Dutch Reformed have a strong history of aggressive involvement in the political sphere dating back to Abraham Kuyper, a prime minister of the Netherlands who also founded a Christian university, a Christian newspaper, and a denomination which rapidly became the second-largest Protestant church in the Netherlands. Their immigrant heirs have well over a century of aggressive Christian engagement in American secular politics — one which long predates the modern Christian conservative movement.
I didn't know this. Fascinating.
However, to say the Dutch have a tendency toward being insular and clannish is an understatement. (Don't get the Vandersomethings together to shoot me — I grew up in Grand Rapids, I'm a Calvin College graduate, and I know what I'm talking about.)
As I have been told by a Dutch co-worker: "If you're not Dutch, you're not much." Do you know if the Dutch Reformed have strong ties to Kalamazoo College or to Hillsdale College (both in Michigan)?
For an outsider to gain the trust of the Dutch Reformed, that outsider needs to begin early and work hard to convince lots of tall blond Dutchmen that a pretty Pentecostal from Alaska with family troubles is a good candidate. It's definitely not impossible, but it will be challenging — the Dutch, unlike some parts of American evangelicalism, are not known for their willingness to be forgiving of moral issues in the home. I know people who only two generations ago were ordered by their parents to wear black wedding dresses when premarital sexual relations resulted in a “forced marriage.”
I am not sure about the "family values" issue, seeing as how her daughter is providing for her child, and the father has rather publicly burned his bridges with the Palin family. Secondly, I think that both her decision to keep the baby, as well as Sarah's decision to bear Trig, will act as a strong advertisement to the Iowans that Sarah can be trusted.
On the other hand, once the Dutch Reformed are convinced that somebody is a good candidate, they'll work double overtime for that candidate, and in Republican caucuses in Iowa, delivering Pella and Northwest Iowa is a major step towards victory.
I think this is crucial, and is where the rubber meets the road. I was at the RightOnline conference in Minnesota last weekend, and Michele Bachmann gave a speech there. She ended up with a long (for a politician) description of Jonathan (son of Saul) and his armour-bearer against the Philistines. Jonathan said to his armour bearer, let's climb up the cliff to the stronghold, and if the Philistines see us and say, "Wait for us to come to you" then we won't attack, but if the Philistines say "Come up to us" we will take it as a sign that God has delivered them into our hands. And so it happened, and God gave Israel a great victory.
Bachmann used this as an illustration of how conservatives should not be afraid politically. It was red meat to the religious right, without sounding "too" kooky to others -- there was nothing explicitly miraculous, and to show pluck in the face of daunting odds is still a trait admired among Republicans.
But more importantly, as I remarked to the person sitting next to me, is it was very Palinesque. Bachmann is making a play for the religious right, partly to claim the now-uncommitted Huckabee voters, and partly to pre-empt Palin before Palin declares.
I wouldn't be surprised if somebody tries to get a photo of Sarah Palin in wooden shoes carrying tulips during a Tulip Time parade. There are better ways to win the Dutch vote — memorizing the Heidelberg Catechism might be a good start, or at least understanding the applicability of Q&A 1 to the life of any Bible-believing Christian regardless of denomination.
Showing up in Waterloo, Iowa to declare is the next step for Bachmann; it is a masterstroke of genius for Palin to steal her thunder by showing up for the film, yet not commit to running (and opening herself up "officially" to everyone else's fire).
However, I think Palin’s handlers understand the importance of the Dutch vote in Republican Party politics in Iowa — especially in the conservative Christian wing — and this Pella event is intended to help introduce her to that constituency. Palin’s views of Christian political activism are not those of Abraham Kuyper, but I can't think of very many other candidates in the race who stand a serious chance of getting strong support from the Dutch Reformed as an organized constituency.
That's the fatal flaw of the left's "Nuts and Sluts" scorched-earth policy against Palin: it makes it almost impossible for anyone to question her religious or conservative credentials.
Of course, I have no inside knowledge and could easily be wrong. But if Palin or her handlers didn't plan this deliberately, they sure got lucky and hit on a really good idea by accident.
Who knows? Maybe she even prayed about it first...
Cheers!
First, on your Hillsdale and Kalamazoo College questions: there's no formal denominational connection, but yes, there are connections between political conservatives in the CRC and faculty at those colleges.
Hope College and Western Theological Seminary are RCA schools in Holland, Michigan; Calvin College, Calvin Seminary, and Kuyper College are CRC schools in Grand Rapids. In Iowa, Central College in Pella and Northwestern College in Orange City are RCA schools; Dordt College in Sioux Center is a CRC school. There are other CRC-affiliated and RCA-affiliated schools, but none of them are politically relevant to the current discussion.
Bingo on “if you aren't Dutch, you aren't much.” I'm Italian, grew up in Grand Rapids, and am a Calvin College graduate. Nuff said? I know what I'm talking about when I speak of Dutch insularity. It's possible to be accepted, but it's hard and it takes time — lots of it.
Fortunately for Sarah Palin, being a conservative five-point Calvinist (which I am, by the way) is not the only way to be accepted. But you're absolutely right that people need to feel Palin is “safe” if they're going to become ardent backers and campaigners for her, as opposed to simply voting for her. Convincing a Dutch Reformed conservative to vote for a Pentecostal requires the Pentecostal to convince the voter that there's a lot of common ground on other issues.
Palin would never be allowed to join most CRC and many RCA churches unless she agreed to support infant baptism and (depending on the church) a lot of other doctrinal issues, but most conservative Dutch Reformed people have long ago gotten used to working with Roman Catholics and other conservative Protestants on the abortion issue. I don't think Rick Santorum can gain traction with the Dutch Reformed as long as there are other Christian conservative candidates in the race, which there still will be in the Iowa caucuses, but I might be surprised by how the Dutch vote in West Michigan if he's the last strongly pro-life candidate left by that time.
This is not new; it's what Abraham Kuyper taught more than a century ago and practiced in the Netherlands, that we can and should have different standards for cooperating with people in the political realm than what we insist on for church membership.
A more serious issue for Palin is that you're dead right on the strongly “scholastic” orientation of the Dutch Reformed, at least compared to typical evangelical churches. A lot of that has fallen by the wayside in the last two generations, but there was a day that the ordinary Dutch Reformed father was likely to have a copy of Calvin's Institutes on his shelf, and did the level of “heavy duty” reading that today isn't common even among the ministers of a lot of evangelical churches.
The perception that Palin is an academic lightweight will hurt her, and it would have been fatal to her a couple of generations ago with the Dutch Reformed. Today, if she has a fairly well-thought-out Christian worldview, especially if it sounds like something from Francis Schaeffer or D. James Kennedy, she'll do fine with even the most conservative among the Dutch Reformed. If she's done a lot of serious study about what it means to be a Christian politician and if her study has led her in the model of Kennedy, she could end up with a huge level of support. With the Dutch Reformed who are less strict theologically but are still conservative evangelicals and look to Tim Keller or Joel Nederhood as an example of a “good Reformed minister,” an emphasis on her personal conversion will be just as effective as it would be with any other evangelical voter.
On the family values issue, I think virtually all modern Christians today understand that children make mistakes, some of them are very serious, and there's a limit to how much their parents can be held accountable.
However, the Dutch Reformed are not Baptists or broad evangelicals; there are really important cultural differences in how problems within the family are viewed. Especially in the more conservative churches, there's an emphasis on severe punishment of sexual immorality and on evaluating fathers’ ability to lead their homes based on how their children turn out. That's entirely appropriate in selecting candidates for the eldership and diaconate, and the situation with the Palin’s daughter would likely be enough to disqualify Todd Palin from serving in any office in my own local church.
Candidates for office are a whole different story. For better or for worse, conservative Christians long ago made their peace with the fact that Ronald Reagan was a divorced movie actor running for president, and my guess is that anyone who is seriously upset about the problems in the Palin family will end up deciding that most of the other Republican candidates have far worse issues.