Satan and Santorum

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Like vampires fleeing a cross, the secular world shudders and trembles at the sight of Rick Santorum delivering a speech about good and evil at Ave Maria University in Florida in 2008. Santorum's statement came 25 years after another much-maligned social conservative, Ronald Reagan, delivered a similarly fiery but much-needed statement in Florida in 1983. In both cases, our liberal friends recoiled in horror, mortified that any American other than Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter might dare remark on matters of faith and state, of the temporal and eternal.

I caught excerpts of the Santorum speech for the first time yesterday, when America's omnipresent force -- Matt Drudge -- posted the link under the grim, black-and-white headline, "SANTORUM'S SATAN WARNING." Immediately, the remainder of the natural universe leapt in knee-jerk hysteria, and soon Santorum's warnings of the Evil One were the talk of a stunned nation.

As I digested the speech, I was struck at how so many of Santorum's themes and words -- which were right on the money -- echoed those expressed in Ronald Reagan's historic Evil Empire speech. Santorum ruminated on the "father of lies," spiritual warfare, truth, vanity, sensuality, temptation, pride, education, abortion. Like Reagan, he fears that the "great political conflict" at work in America "is not a political war at all, or a cultural war -- it is a spiritual war." In that war, "the father of lies has set his sights on none other than good, decent, powerful, influential United States of America."

And then, like Reagan, he finished with a message of faith-based optimism for the faithful gathered in the room: "My message to you today is that you will lose, you will lose battle after battle; you will become frustrated, but do not lose hope. God will be faithful, if you are."

[pollyannaish]

The issue is simply that while it is politically dicey but acceptable to discuss evil, it is a completely different thing to attribute that evil directly to an entity.

 

As Americans, we're pretty comfortable discussing generalities about God, but we are extremely uncomfortable talking about Satan.

 

That said, I haven't heard the speech so I have no idea of this context. But I will say that any hint of specific theology in this campaign is going to get the speaker pilloried. Unless it is liberation theology or socialist Jesusism...and then you'll get a complete pass.

[Rheo]

Team Santorum: U.S. is with Rick on devil belief

Byron York

 

"I don't know what's newsmaking that Rick Santorum believes in right and wrong, good and evil, God and the devil," says one campaign aide. "I really don't know how that's out of the mainstream."

 

It's not. In 2007, the Gallup polling organization asked Americans whether they believe in God, in heaven, in hell, and in the devil. The results: 86 percent of those questioned said they believed in God, 81 percent in heaven, 70 percent in the devil, and 69 percent in hell.

 

Just 21 percent of those questioned said they do not believe in the devil, giving Satan a healthy 70-21 believe/disbelieve ratio. (Eight percent said they weren't sure.)