"Satanic ritual"? Or a Christian fundamentalist/Pentecostal/Charismatic/new-Apostolic attempt to drive out Satan?

According to the news story Police told fire part of satanic ritual by Jennifer Baker, Cincinnati.com, March 2, 2011: "Charmaine Ranford, 25, of Lincoln Heights, faces one count of aggravated arson. ... Ranford is accused of purposely setting a fire at the Marietta Terrace apartments at 10101 Love Court in Lincoln Heights on Monday. When police took her into custody on Tuesday, she described the act as part of a 'satanic ritual,' records show. No injuries were reported, and damage from the fire was minor, Lincoln Heights police said."

Likewise, according to the news story Woman told police she started fire to perform satanic ritual, FOX19, March 2, 2011: "CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) - A Lincoln Heights woman is behind bars after police say she purposefully started an apartment fire as part of a satanic ritual. ... According to court documents, Ranford started a fire at Marietta Terrace on Monday. She admitted to starting the fire and acknowledged she was performing a satanic ritual."

But then, according to the following story: Police: Woman Claims Fire Was Attempt To Remove Satan, WLWT, March 2, 2011: "When confronted by officers, they said Ranford claimed the fire was part of a Satanic ritual. But the woman later said that the fire was to remove Satan from the items being burned, not to worship him" [Emphasis mine].

The WLWT page originally carried the "Satanic ritual" headline too, but then promptly updated it. The other sources have not yet done so.

Maybe the police and court records got Ranford's initial confession wrong? That would seem the most likely explanation. Burning objects that are believed to be inhabited by demons, or which are regarded as a source of temptation, is a very common practice among fundamentalists, Pentecostals, Charismatics, and new-Apostolics. (For some documented examples, see New Apostolic Reformation Leaders Burn Native Art by Bruce Wilson, Talk To ACtion, Tue Oct 19, 2010.) And I would suspect that not every pastor who promotes the burning of such objects is also careful to teach the congregation about fire safety.

Some Satanists, and some non-Satanist ex-Christians too, occasionally perform rites of Cathartic blasphemy that involve burning Bibles or other objects representing their past experiences with abusive authoritarian forms of Christianity. But such rituals are far less common than fundamentalists/Pentecostal/Charismatic/new-Apostolic burnings of non-Christian religious artifacts and lots of other things too, everything from pornography to Harry Potter books. Statistically, it is far more likely that Charmaine Ranford was following fundamentalists/Pentecostal/Charismatic/new-Apostolic teachings than that she was actually practicing some "Satanic ritual." Moreover, had Ranford burned a Bible or any other Christian religious artifact, or if the ritual had involved any actual Satanic symbolism, I'm sure these details would have been featured in the headlines.

I also wonder whether she really intended to confess to "arson" (an attempt to burn the entire building), or whether she just started a fire for the purpose of burning particular objects and was insufficiently mindful of fire safety. I would be interested to know how the police went about interrogating her. It is, alas, far from unheardof for cops to pressure suspects into confessing to something far worse than they are actually guilty of, if anything. It is also not uncommon for the police to make exaggerated charges against someone in anticipation of a plea bargain. Since Charmaine Ranford is also African-American, I also wonder if racism, on the part of the police, might have been a factor here.

I don't know for sure, but I strongly suspect that this woman is a victim of -- among other things -- bureaucratic ignorance about the practices of her particular form of Christianity. If so, I wonder whether her church, if any, will come to her defense, or whether they too will jump to the conclusion that she was practicing "Satanic ritual" and therefore shun her.

An interesting religious studies course website

Shortly ago, I happened to come across the web page for a course called Rel 361: A Social History of Satan, taught by Dr. Adam L. Porter at Illinois College in Jacksonville, IL.

The web page lists lots of interesting and worthwhile stuff. However, it leaves out what I consider to be an important bit of history: The various famous writers, in the 1800's, who spoke favorably of "Satan" or "the Devil." These included:

• William Blake - wrote "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell."
• Mark Twain - wrote Letters from the Earth and A Pen Warmed in Hell
• Giosue Carducci (who is considered to have been one of Italy's greatest poets) - wrote a "Hymn to Satan"
• Charles Baudelaire - wrote "The Litanies of Satan"
• Matilda Gage (leading 19th century feminist) - referred to Satan as the "God of Freedom" in her book Woman, Church, and State, echoing the French historian Jules Michelet's favorable portrayal of a hypothetical Satanic ceremony by medieval peasants.
• George Bernard Shaw - wrote The Devil's Disciple and Man and Superman

On the plus side, it appears that the course will devote some attention to the Satanic panic of the 1980's and early 1990's.

These days, ever-growing numbers of "conspiracy theorists" are working hard to revive the panic. So, it's good to see college students being taught about the historical reality. Thank you, Dr. Porter, for including it in your course.

Exorcism, Satanic panic, and a sex scandal involving a Catholic exorcist and anti-abortion activist

Given the popularity of the latest exorcism movie The Rite, and given all the talk about how the exorcism trend is scaring people back into the Catholic Church, I've written several posts about exorcism and related topics on various blogs:

• Exorcism and religious intolerance, Talk To Action, February 1, 2011


• Catholic exorcism and NYPD “experts on occult crimes”???, LiveJournal, February 6, 2011


• The Catholic exorcism trend and Italy’s Satanic panic, Wordpress, February 9, 2011.


• Bill Donohue boasts: exorcism now mainstream, LiveJournal, February 11, 2011


• Preliminary response to Michael Cuneo on exorcism, Wordpress, February 12, 2011

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.")

More on the definitions of "Satanist" and "Pagan" - response to Chell

In the comments below Hrafnkell's post Are Satanists Pagans?, someone named Chell wrote:

From Diane's post:
"The vast majority do NOT simply accept Christian beliefs except for siding with the Other Guy."
To believe in the "Other Guy," don't you have to accept at least some Christian beliefs? Where is the line drawn on those beliefs, if at all? So for Satan to exist, Christianity must be correct.

Wrong. First, many Satanists are atheists who don't believe in any gods at all, but see Satan as only a symbol. Among theistic Satanists, who do revere Satan as a deity, there are many different theologies. For examples of some of these theologies, see What is Satanism?. See also The varieties of theistic ("traditional") Satanism.

And if it is, Pagan Gods must not be worshipped.

Since when were Satanists noted for retaining Christianity's prohibitions?

Chell has a blog of her own, called "Chell's Roost." In a post titled Is this even possible?, she wrote:

Christianity is considered a monotheistic religion. But a post on Hrafnkell’s blog, a blog linked from there, and some e-mail chitter chatter has me thinking about this. In Christianity, it is believed there is one God. Yet Christians might pray not only to Jesus, but to Mary or saints (some derived from Pagan Gods) the way they pray to God, and might even honor them the way a Pagan might honor a God. This, to me, smacks of worship. How can Jesus or Mary answer a prayer that they cannot hear? And is it not divinity that gives them the ability to hear and answer those who call on them? Even if their divinity comes from their “one” God, that of Pagan Gods does not. To call on a Pagan God, does one not have to first believe in that God, even if he has relabeled her a saint? So do Christians actually worship beyond one God?

First, not all Christians pray to saints. As a general rule, Protestants don't and Catholics do. Furthermore, Catholic theology makes a distinction between "dulia" and "latria." (See the online Catholic Encylcopedia article on dulia.)

My question here is about polytheism. Along with the question on Hrafnkell’s blog about the possibility of a Satanist being a Pagan, can a Christian be a Pagan? That seems a preposterous stretch, like asking if red can be green,

A more interesting question is what Chell thinks of the African diaspora religions and other similar hybrids of Christianity and non-Abrahamic religions. Also, what does Chell think of the Western occult tradition?

Blaming "Satanists" for Catholic clergy sex scandals???

The recent flurry of Italian Catholic public pronouncements about "Satanism" might be, in part, a response to an October 2007 sex scandal involving a Vatican official, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico, director of one of three Vatican departments that make up the Congregation for the Clergy, the Vatican “ministry” for the clergy.

An undercover TV reporter caught Msgr. Stenico, on video, propositioning a young man. When confronted, he tried to excuse himself by claiming that he himself was really just doing another undercover investigation. He claimed he was investigating an alleged conspiracy of "Satanists" who were out to seduce clergy.

More details, plus links to news stories, in a post Blaming "Satanists" for Catholic clergy sex scandals??? on my LiveJournal blog.

More about Satanism and the Catholic Church in Italy

I just now came across Satanic Cults in Fashion in Rome, Says Priest by Jennifer Riley, Christian Post, Tue, Apr. 22 2008. Nothing new, really. Mostly just a shorter version of the CBN article I wrote about in my previous post.

Again we have the claim: "The overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation of Italy has an estimated 800 satanic cults, with more than 600,000 followers." This article then melodramatically adds: "But Rome, home to Vatican City and the pope, is where the fiercest spiritual battle is taking place."

Some news from Italy, about Satanism and about the Catholic Church

I recently came across an interesting article on the CBN website, part of Pat Robertson's empire: Is the Devil Gaining a Foothold in Rome? by George Thomas, April 21, 2008.

First, I'll skip ahead to and quote in full the most interesting part, about Marco Dimiti, the leader of a Satanist group in Italy:

But Marco Dimiti says that the Catholic Church's portrayal of Satan is part of the problem.

To many Italians, Dimitri represents the devil. He heads the Children of Satan, a group that reportedly has more than one-thousand members.

"We don't have a cult of devil worship, that would be absurd because the cult of the devil would be the cult of evil - but for us, good and evil are subjective to each individual," says Dimitri.

In 1996, Dimitri was accused of raping a 2-year old boy and a teenage girl in satanic rituals. He was jailed for 14 months before being exonerated by the Italian courts.

"True Satanism puts man at the center of the universe - and is a noble expression," Dimitri said. "I want to say to Father Amorth what I say to all exorcists. Leave people in peace!"

The rest of the article features claims by Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's Chief Exorcist; Father Pedro Barrajón, a Catholic priest who serves in Rome; and Silvano Lilli, an evangelical pastor in Rome.

One claim is: "There are an estimated 800 satanic cults operating in the country [Italy], with more than 600,000 followers." Yeah, right. I wish.

And then Lilli says: "The devil's diabolical influence is growing in so many areas of our society. ... He needs to be driven out." He doesn't explain what he means by "the devil's diabolical influence." If he's a typical religious right winger, that means things like feminism and gay rights, I guess.

Then Amorth talks about how he does exorcisms.

After that is a discussion of the "Beasts of Satan" case, about which see this collection of news stories on my Against Satanic Panics site.

See also Italy's recent Satanic panic - and its impact on the Roman Catholic Church worldwide, and see also the collection of news stories about Exorcism, the Vatican, and the recent Italian Satanic panic on my page about Exorcism, "spiritual warfare," and anti-occultism.

Next in the CBN article are several paragraphs bemoaning the rise of "magicians, fortunetellers and faith healers" as rivals to the Church.

After that are the several paragraphs I quoted earlier about Marco Dimiti.

The article ends with more exorcism-talk by Amorth.

Welsh religious right wing

Although the religious right wing does not seem to be as powerful in the U.K. as it is here in the U.S.A., the U.K. does have a religous right wing.

In Wales, there's a new political party called the Welsh Christian Party, whose first big issue is to change the Welsh flag to get rid of the traditional dragon emblem, which, to these folks, symbolizes the Devil. See WELSH and SATANIC...