The Devil and Bobby Jindal

Gov Bobby Jindal has become a GOP rising star. Jindal along with Gov Sara Palin and former Gov Mitt Romney are emerging as the top contenders for the Republican nomination for President in 2012.

He's the rock star of the Republican Party right now," says Jeff Crouere, the former executive director of the Louisiana GOP and host of daily political talk show Ringside Politics.

But as the country gets acquainted with the Bayou's boy wonder, the stranger details of Jindal's religious or personal background remain largely unknown, even among the Republican grassroots.

How many Americans know that Jindal boasted of participating in an exorcism that purged the spirit of Satan from a college girlfriend?

The blogs are in a-twitter about story of Bobby and the Devil.

In an essay Jindal wrote in 1994 for the New Oxford Review, a serious right-wing Catholic journal, Jindal narrated a bizarre story of a personal encounter with a demon, in which he participated in an exorcism with a group of college friends. And not only did they cast out the supernatural spirit that had possessed his friend, Jindal wrote that he believes that their ritual may well have cured her cancer.

Reading the article leaves no doubt that Jindal -- who graduated from Brown University in 1991, was a Rhodes Scholar, and had been accepted at Yale Law School and Harvard Medical School when he wrote the essay -- was completely serious about the encounter. He even said the experience "reaffirmed" his faith.

In the essay (purchase required), Jindal describes an emotional friendship with a classmate, "Susan," recently diagnosed with skin cancer and reeling after the suicide of a close friend. Susan's behavior becomes stranger, and she is surrounded by "sulfuric" smells. Finally, one night at a prayer meeting, she collapses in a seizure -- and the exorcism begins:

It appeared as if we were observing a tremendous battle between the Susan we knew and loved and some strange evil force. But the momentum had shifted and we now sensed that victory was at hand.

While Alice and Louise held Susan, her sister continued holding the Bible to her face. Almost taunting the evil spirit that had almost beaten us minutes before, the students dared Susan to read biblical passages. She choked on certain passages and could not finish the sentence "Jesus is Lord." Over and over, she repeated "Jesus is L..L..LL," often ending in profanities. In between her futile attempts, Susan pleaded with us to continue trying and often smiled between the grimaces that accompanied her readings of Scripture. Just as suddenly as she went into the trance, Susan suddenly reappeared and claimed "Jesus is Lord."

With an almost comical smile, Susan then looked up as if awakening from a deep sleep and asked, "Has something happened?" She did not remember any of the past few hours and was startled to find her friends breaking out in cheers and laughter, overwhelmed by sudden joy and relief.

According to Max Blumenthal at The Daily Beast:

During the 2006 gubernatorial campaign, the campaign of Jindal’s Democratic opponent, incumbent Gov. Kathleen Blanco, attempted to inject his religious views into the race by running an ad promoting a website called JindalonReligion.com, which featured his essay about participating in an exorcism. However, Jindal immediately fired back, denouncing the commercial as an assault on his faith and on the deeply religious culture of Louisiana.

TMP notes that "the state Dems did make an issue in 2007 out of Jindal's extreme Catholicism and his view of Protestant tenets as heretical, but the effort provoked a backlash among voters who thought the assault was religious bigotry. So Dems didn't make an issue out of Jindal's experiment."

The question is will Palin or Romney resurrect the "devil tale" if Jindal decides to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012.