But Palin is not a member of the church the Democrats are referencing, that church denies it is anti-Mormon and there's no evidence of any anti-Mormon rhetoric from its pulpit.
Now, Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Holland is backing off the statement.
"We do not plan on making her religion an issue," Holland said Wednesday afternoon, adding he had not seen the news release, which includes a quote by him along with several questions.
The pertinent one: "Will Republicans of the LDS faith vote for Sarah Palin, a devout member of an anti-Mormon denomination?"
Palin was a member of the Wasilla Assemblies of God, a congregation of the umbrella Pentecostal faith with some 12,500 churches in the United States. But that Alaska church says she has not been a member since 2002.
And Juleen Turnage, director of communications for the Assemblies of God, says there's no official policy of the faith on the Mormon religion.
"We do not preach or teach against any denomination," Turnage said.
Utah Republican Party Chairman Stan Lockhart called the Democrats' statement "religion-baiting" and deplorable.
"It's just beneath the discourse that needs to be the case in the state or in our nation," Lockhart said. "It's just regrettable that they are stooping so low. It's got to be a new low" in Utah politics.
Democratic Party Executive Director Todd Taylor said the party stands corrected and regrets sending the release. "It should have been looked into deeper," he said.
But he noted that Republicans put the issue of religion on the table in describing Palin's attributes for the nomination as Sen. John McCain's running mate.
Utah Democrats have made hay over the perceived bias against Mormons in some wings of the Republican Party that surfaced during Mitt Romney's presidential bid. Some pundits have blamed Romney's failed campaign on the wariness of Protestant evangelicals to vote for a Mormon, regarded as cultists by some faiths.
The campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, which is mentioned in the Utah Democratic Party's statement, did not return calls for comment.
There are some published accounts of pastors in Assemblies of God attacking the Mormon faith, including an article in a January 1999 church newsletter hoping for God's "forgiving grace [to] turn Mormons from their destructive teachings to Jesus Christ . . .."
That piece was written by a pastor in Corvallis, Ore., and is not connected to the congregation in Alaska that Palin attended.
Dean Jackson, pastor of the Rock Canyon Church, an Assemblies of God congregation in Provo, says there are different branches of his faith that are on the left and right on the political spectrum but that there is no anti-Mormon belief.
"There's nowhere in Assemblies of God doctrinal statement that has anything to do with Mormonism," he said.
But, he adds, the disappointing part is how news of religion in this year's presidential cycle has been bad news.
"The thing that always concerns me is that religion gets injected into the dialogue in a negative sense [rather] than in a positive sense," he said. "The positive should far outweigh the negative."
