You wouldn’t think the supporters of Barack Obama, who earlier this campaign cycle had to quit the church he’d attended for twenty years once video of his America-damning pastor were made public, would want to go after anyone over the charge of religious extremism.  But apparently the left has no sense of irony, and now Sarah Palin is being attacked for her membership in an Assemblies of God church.

Sarah Palin often identifies herself simply as Christian.

Yet John McCain’s running mate has deep roots in Pentecostalism, a spirit-filled Christian tradition that is one of the fastest growing in the world. It’s often derided by outsiders and Bible-believers alike.

Palin was baptized Roman Catholic as a newborn. She was then baptized in a Pentecostal Assemblies of God church as a teen and attended that church until six years ago, when she and her family adopted a different home church, an independent evangelical church.

Of course, if anyone would have bothered to look up the details about the church Sarah Palin and her family actually attends (and the reasons they gave for choosing that church) we learn that there’s nothing really all that extreme about their religious beliefs.

One of the musical directors at the church, Adele Morgan, who has known Ms. Palin since the third grade, said the Palins moved to the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church in 2002, in part because its ministry is less “extreme” than Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God, which practice speaking in tongues and miraculous healings.

“A lot of churches are about music and media and having a big profile,” Ms. Morgan said. “We are against that. That is why it is so attractive to politicians because they can just sit there and be safe.”

“We’ve gotten a lot of their people when the other churches get too extreme,” Ms. Morgan continued. However, she added, “If you lift your hands when we’re singing, we’re not going to shoot you down.”

If you’re keeping track at home, it took the national media less than a week to glom on to the alleged extremism of Sarah Palin’s church.

How long was Barack Obama in the race before his membership Trinity United Church?  An extremist mega-church situated right in the heart of Chicago?

Double standards are lovely, aren’t they?