Lutheran pastor, in Texas, labels Oprah Winfrey and Mormons "Satanic"

For some insight into what "Satan" means to those Christians who promote belief in Satan, see Focus on Faith: Want to Re-Define God? by Rev. Dr. Bobby W. Leggett, Trinity Lutheran Church-Blanco, November 11, 2009.

Leggett starts off by alleging that Oprah's followers are "the fastest-growing church in the world" and calls them "a cultic religion ... Satanic in what it teaches." Later in the column, Leggett says, "There are two kinds of religion in the world. First, is man-centered religion. Religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Mormonism, Communism, Satanism, humanism and Oprahism." The only other kind of religion in the world is, of course, what he calls "historic Christianity" (and perhaps Judaism and Islam?). He then says, "In any occult religion God is always reduced and the human is always elevated to be a god. ... What was the Serpents promise in Genesis, '…you shall be like God.'"

Leggett's column, by the way, appears not on the Trinity Lutheran Church website, but on the website of a supposedly secular local newspaper, the Blanco County News, in Blanco, Texas. Here in New York, it's hard to imagine a column like this getting published in a local newspaper. Texas is in the Bible Belt, after all.

However, even here in New York City, I'm pretty sure that your average evangelical storefront church pastor would agree with Leggett's column, as would at least some of the people in the Catholic hierarchy. (A somewhat similar statement, though more nuanced, appears in the Vatican document Jesus Christ, the Bearer of the Waters of Life: A Christian reflection on the “New Age”: "Mind-expanding techniques are meant to reveal to people their divine power; by using this power, people prepare the way for the Age of Enlightenment. This exaltation of humanity overturns the correct relationship between Creator and creature, and one of its extreme forms is Satanism.")