Bristol Palin, the daughter of potential GOP presidential hopeful Sarah Palin, said her mom has "got God on her side," and that "people are envious of that," during an interview with Christianity Today about her new memoir, "Not Afraid of Life."
When questioned further about why she thought Providence was on her mother's side, Bristol replied puzzlingly.
"We all have God on our side. We all know at the end of the day that we're serving him, and we're really confident with our religion," Bristol said.
USA Today writer Cathy Lynn Grossman explored Bristol Palin's comments and the idea of being on God's side. "God, being God, can take multiple sides, evidently," Grossman wrote, "since Jennifer Gray won (Dancing with the Stars) and Joe Biden is currently U.S. vice president, not (Bristol's) mom.
"Sarah Palin herself has commented, with varying degrees of success, on all this side-picking," Grossman continued. "In 2008 she told Charlie Gibson, 'Abraham Lincoln had said ... let us not pray that God is on our side, in a war, or any other time. But let us pray that we are on God's side.'"
Grossman went on to cite an article from The Guardian titled, "Palin misinterprets Lincoln on ABC," which alleged that Palin failed to interpret Lincolns' words correctly.
Grossman neglected to point out that Palin may have simply lifted the misrepresented Lincoln quote from a Barack Obama CNN interview in 2007.
When asked," Do you think that God takes sides in a war?" Obama replied, " Well, you know, I always remember Abraham Lincoln when, during the Civil War, he said we shouldn't be asking whose side God is on, but whether we're on his side."
While the Lincoln quote is likely apocryphal, the 19th-Century president did address the topic of God and war on several occasions, including his famous second inaugural address in March 1865. On that occasion Lincoln said both the Confederate and Union sides of the Civil War "read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes..."
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