{"id":45,"date":"2010-09-29T12:22:37","date_gmt":"2010-09-29T16:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/philosophicalfragments\/?p=45"},"modified":"2010-09-29T12:22:37","modified_gmt":"2010-09-29T16:22:37","slug":"why-christine-odonnells-witchcraft-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/philosophicalfragments\/2010\/09\/29\/why-christine-odonnells-witchcraft-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Christine O'Donnell's "Witchcraft" Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I half agree and half disagree with my respected colleague, the manager of Patheos\u2019 Pagan Portal, who writes<\/a> that the whole affair surrounding Christine O\u2019Donnell\u2019s \u201cdabbling\u201d in witchcraft is a non-issue. \u00a0It\u2019s actually quite revealing.<\/p>\n

Consider the three relevant parties in the story: (1) Christine O\u2019Donnell herself, who \u201cdabbled in witchcraft\u201d as a teenager and once enjoyed an impromptu occult picnic with her Beelzebub-loving boyfriend on a blood-spattered sacrificial altar, (2) the media and Democratic partisans who seized upon this revelation and made it a story, and (3) conservative voters who have supported O\u2019Donnell, at least in part, because of her Christian faith and activism.<\/p>\n

Concerning (1) Christine O\u2019Donnell herself, the story tells us nothing significant. \u00a0It is not that religious beliefs are irrelevant to the consideration of a candidate. \u00a0When you vote for a candidate, you do not vote for a machine that will automatically produce certain actions and results. \u00a0You vote for a human being, and every politician brings the whole of his or her convictions, personality and life history to the job. \u00a0Religious beliefs speak to the individual\u2019s fundamental convictions and values. \u00a0Faith shapes character, and character matters, not only because it shapes the policies for which the individual will fight, but because it shapes how the politician will respond to the unexpected, respond to hardship, respond to temptation. \u00a0This is not to say that Christians should only vote for Christians, but faith \u2014 and especially the faith\u2019s moral teaching \u2014 is far too powerful a shaper of action and personality to be dismissed as irrelevant to the voting decision.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But Christine O\u2019Donnell\u2019s dabbling in witchcraft when she was a teenager tells us nothing significant about her present religious beliefs and character.<\/p>\n

The O\u2019Donnell \u201cwitchcraft\u201d affair is significant less for what it tells us about O\u2019Donnell herself and more for what it tells us about (2) her detractors in the commentariat and in the Democratic party. \u00a0More precisely, it tells us what those detractors think of O\u2019Donnell supporters.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Donnell\u2019s detractors certainly don\u2019t care that she dabbled in witchcraft (if that is even the right phrase; whether she was speaking of Wicca or outright satanism or some faux, dress-up, Dungeons and Dragons silliness is unclear). \u00a0They neither hold this against her nor believe that it\u2019s further evidence of her insanity. \u00a0In fact, her detractors are generally in favor of sampling different religious traditions, even unorthodox ones. \u00a0They understand perfectly well that this was many years ago, when she was young and in love. \u00a0If Michelle Obama had dabbled in Vodou when she was a teenager, these same detractors would scoff at anyone who cared about it. \u00a0Years ago, they would say; ordinary teenage experimentation; not that there\u2019s anything wrong with Vodou, they would say, but Obama has left it far behind and it\u2019s what she believes now that matters.<\/p>\n

Yet the witchcraft experimentation, they believe, should matter to her supporters<\/em>. \u00a0Surely conservative Christians, they imagine, will be outraged that she dabbled in witchcraft \u2014 even if it was many years ago, and even if she was in high school at the time. \u00a0In other words, liberals who seized upon this story were not really offended; and they are, in fact, reasonable not to be offended. \u00a0But they do not grant that same rationality to their political opposition.<\/p>\n

In this sense, it\u2019s similar to the story of Bristol Palin\u2019s pregnancy. \u00a0The liberals who thought this was a delicious scandal would never reject, say, Barbara Boxer simply because her daughter got pregnant. \u00a0They did not care, but because they assumed that religious conservatives would care, they thought they could use this as a wedge to separate the politician from her supporters. \u00a0They believe that conservative Christians are, by and large, irrational and intolerant people who do not understand that a parent cannot always control the actions of her children, and who will summarily reject someone they otherwise supported because they discover her daughter got pregnant.<\/p>\n

What the episode reveals (3) of O\u2019Donnell\u2019s supporters is that they are, in fact, reasonable people who will not reject a candidate for a youthful indiscretion. \u00a0Outside the media and liberal bloggers, no one, and certainly not her supporters, have really cared that O\u2019Donnell once dabbled in witchcraft. \u00a0Apparently the liberals who pushed this story were expecting that droves of O\u2019Donnell supporters would desert her \u2014 and yet no such thing has happened. \u00a0The news of her teenaged dabbling fell upon the electorate and\u2026nothing happened.<\/p>\n

Conservative Christians actually have a well-trained sense for stories of sin and redemption. \u00a0Conservative Christians are so keenly aware of the sinfulness of the human heart that they expect indiscretions from absolutely everyone; in fact they will be wary of anyone who claims to have had none, because they will know that he or she is lying. \u00a0This is why they would not reject Sarah Palin for Bristol\u2019s pregnancy, and indeed would not reject Bristol herself. \u00a0This is also why conservative Christians are never surprised when they learn that Christian musicians, politicians, and even preachers are guilty of their own indiscretions. \u00a0They may believe that the person should step down, should be held accountable for what he or she did as a mature and responsible adult; yet they will often welcome him or her back, because they believe not only in sin but also in forgiveness and redemption.<\/p>\n

The episode reveals, in other words, that O\u2019Donnell herself is precisely the kind of human being that Christians expect to encounter. \u00a0More importantly, it reveals that O\u2019Donnell\u2019s detractors believe her supporters are irrational and intolerant enough to reject a candidate for some silly thing she did as a teenager, long before she converted to Christianity in college. \u00a0And reveals that O\u2019Donnell\u2019s supporters in fact are nothing of the sort.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I half agree and half disagree with my respected colleague, the manager of Patheos\u2019 Pagan Portal, who writes that the whole affair surrounding Christine O\u2019Donnell\u2019s \u201cdabbling\u201d in witchcraft is a non-issue. \u00a0It\u2019s actually quite revealing. Consider the three relevant parties in the story: (1) Christine O\u2019Donnell herself, who \u201cdabbled in witchcraft\u201d as a teenager and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Christine O'Donnell's "Witchcraft" Matters - Philosophical Fragments<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I half agree and half disagree with my respected colleague, the manager of Patheos' Pagan Portal, who writes that the whole affair surrounding Christine\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/philosophicalfragments\/2010\/09\/29\/why-christine-odonnells-witchcraft-matters\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Christine O'Donnell's "Witchcraft" Matters - 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