Baton Rouge, La., Aug 23, 2007 / 08:35 am
A political scuffle has ensued between rival candidates who are campaigning to become the next governor of Louisiana. The brouhaha began when Bobby Jindal’s challengers ran a television ad that accuses him of calling Protestants "scandalous, depraved, selfish and heretical.”
The 30-second ad features a woman on-screen saying Jindal doesn't respect other people's religion and directs viewers to a website with links to several articles Jindal authored in the 1990s on Catholicism. The ad is running in heavily Protestant central and north Louisiana.
The articles referred to include a piece published in the New Oxford Review in 1996. In it, Jindal writes about the Catholic religion as the true Christian faith and refers to a "scandalous series of divisions and new denominations" of religions since the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.
"Despite my best efforts, I could find no justification in the Bible or the Early Church for any individual to establish his own church apart from the one established by Christ," Jindal wrote.