Update: Ignore this post. I was wrong, it looks as if Christine O’Donnell had an evangelical phase, and if my chronology is correct she was an evangelical Protestant Christian when this video was made. She later converted back to Roman Catholicism.
The Economist points out the strangeness of Christine O’Donnell, Republican candidate for the Senate from Delaware, of promoting Creationism, when as a Roman Catholic there’s no religious necessity for her to do so. Now, there’s no reason that a Catholic can’t be a Creationist, but I think Christine O’Donnell’s attitude makes more sense when you listen to her inveighing against masturbation:
She speaks like a Protestant, making explicit reference to the Bible many times. Intellectual American Catholics are wont to observe that while Protestants believe in the Bible (at least Low Church Protestants), Catholics believe in the Church (granted, Catholics obviously believe in the Bible as well, but do not adhere to the notion of sola scriptura). I think O’Donnell’s idiosyncrasies are totally understandable in light of the assimilation of American religionists to specific subcultures, whatever their notional sect. American Roman Catholicism has long been “Protestant” in its orientation on a de facto level. While liberal Catholics align with mainline Protestants and use the language of social justice, conservative populist Catholics like Christine O’Donnell use the language of evangelical Protestants, for whom everything is “Biblically based.”
I have read–and I don’t know whether it’s true–that in her previous political incarnations, O’Donnell was a fiscal liberal. Which makes me wonder if the Tea Party, casting around for a suitable candidate to go against Castle, grabbed her and programmed her. It’s true that she seems to have had already the necessary fundamentalist religious beliefs, but that may have made her all the more attractive. (That would be one area in which she WOULDN’T have to be programmed.)
Perhaps their thinking was: “Hey, here’s another very pretty youngish woman available to run. Let’s turn her into a clone of Sarah Palin!”
from what i can gather she’s an opportunist. but that doesn’t make her any different from most politicians.
Of course not, but usually there’s a bit more substance behind the opportunism. I don’t see much substance in her.
“She speaks like a Protestant, making explicit reference to the Bible many times.”
If you’re referring to the video, this is just not so. She makes one reference to the Bible, and a youth pastor makes a similar one.
Her closing argument, which strikes me as her main pitch, is neither Bible-based nor even religious. It’s reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’s comments on masturbation as habituating the subject to sex as solitary fantasy rather than something relational. It’s hardly my position, but it’s not a crazy or stupid point.
Believe it or not, only the old testement kind of mentions this when Oman spilled his seed and would not rise children for his dead brother. A practive of the anicent hebrews-marry the wife of the dead brother. What is interesting is that that niether the old or new testment mentions abortion. In fact, the case against abortion is really early non-new testment writings like the Didache. Both Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have a better case against abortion than evangelicals since they also consider the writings of the church outside of the new testment and the Didache is dated probably around the 1st century to 2nd century. In fact, more educated Evangelicals like professors at Wheaton know church fathers and extra biblical text that the average evangelical that just quotes his bible doesn’t know.
Well, I heard she opposes Cap and Trade and is strong on the anti-illegal immirgation. Probably better than Mike Huckabee who governed like a liberal ecnomically and let the Mexican consul rent for a 1 a year in Little Rock. Huckabee was beholden to Tyson Chicken. Tyson hired a lot of illegal immirgants. As Susan states, unforunately, many Republicans will forgive you if you are bad on ecomonics as long as you are good on social issues. Also, Huckabee was soft on crime and let go of prisoners where one killed a cop in Washington but the Values based conference gave him second place behind Mike Pence.