Montana Headlines thought it a bit suspicious when a leftie dropped by on the last post, indicating agreement with our plug for Gov. Bobby Jindal as McCain's Veep choice.
But Wulfgar let the (black?) cat out of the bag: Dems apparently see Gov. Jindal, a devout convert to Catholicism, as being vulnerable because he witnessed an exorcism while in college and (gasp) prayed the "Hail Mary" while it was going on. He wrote an article about the experience in the New Oxford Review -- a journal that was started by Episcopalians of the Anglo-Catholic persuasion, but whose editors likewise converted to Catholicism subsequent to the theological and moral turmoil in their former denomination. And the article included a passage about the exorcism.
Whatever the phenomenon was that the youthful Jindal observed, the net effect was that it left him believing in "the reality of spirits, angels and other related phenomena..." Shocking, truly shocking, that any Christian might believe in the reality of the spirit world.
While the event Jindal relates appears to be from his early days of being a Catholic, and took place within the loose structure of a generic college Christian organization, it is worth noting that exorcisms are, unless things have changed recently, a standard part of every Catholic baptism. Pope John Paul II approved a specific rite for exorcisms in the late 1990's. A belief that there are demonic forces that can specifically oppress an individual, and that prayer has efficacy in dealing with it is not something that comes from the fringes of Christianity.
Anything that a politician has written in the past is, of course, fair game. What church a candidate chose to attend for decades is fair game. Pretty much everything is fair game in politics. Voters can and will decide whether something makes them more or less likely to support a candidate.
But what if Jindal were still a Hindu, and believed in reincarnation and karma? Or if he had dabbled in Buddhism in college rather than Catholicism? Or if he had smoked peyote as part of a spiritual search that included an exploration of Native American religion? Would he be just as scary and excrable as he apparently is for having been a part of an unusual prayer service held by a campus Christian organization at Brown University, back when Christianity was still a new thing for him? Would he be mocked for these experiences on leftie blogs?
But in a nation where 62% of Americans reportedly believe that there is such a thing as the devil, we're not sure how much ground will be gained by Democrats ridiculing Jindal about the fact that a very strange college experience convinced him that there is more to the spiritual world than meets the eye.
A recent Gallup poll indicates that nearly 3/4 of Americans believe in the reality of paranormal phenomenon (75% for Christians, 66% for non-Christians). For that matter, 64% of Americans believe that aliens have contacted humans and nearly half apparently believe that aliens have abducted humans... Now, just because 31% of Americans believe in telepathy doesn't mean that there is a 31% chance that it is true -- a majority of people can believe something and have it be wrong. But in America today, someone who doesn't believe that paranormal phenomena exist is actually the odd man out.
If Democrats decide to go down the road of religious ridicule toward Gov. Jindal, it will only reinforce the perception that their party is a hotbed of religious intolerance -- a party where it is acceptable (cool, even) to have dabbled in just about anything in college... other than Christianity.
