Reflections on the Channel 4 Exorcism programme February 24th
Before coming to St Cuthbert’s, Stephen used to be the Officer for Spiritual Deliverance for the Diocese of Gloucester. Because of his experience Stephen was asked to be a participant on the panel in the Channel 4 programme on Exorcism on February 24th. This article appeared in the Church Times on 4th March 2005.
Trevor Newport who carried out the deliverance
The
Exorcism on Channel 4 created a certain stir in church and other circles before
its broadcast on February 24th. Press coverage about the attempt to
measure the brain patterns of an individual undergoing the process of exorcism
attracted words like ‘irresponsible’ or ‘dangerous’. In the event the actual
exorcism on screen was a mild affair and many who watched it were probably
fairly bored (and tired) by the time the programme finished well after midnight! The material
extracted from the brain-waves of the subject, Colin, was inconclusive and
neither he nor the minister practicing the deliverance had any really
interesting things to say about the procedure. It was hardly riveting
television.
The mild furore beforehand and the subsequent anti-climatic silence after the broadcast is perhaps instructive about the way that the practice and perception of exorcism is changing in the church and society today. Why was there such a fuss made about the programme beforehand? The simple answer is that, until now, there have been many in the church whose deliverance ministries have been alarming and dangerous both to the individuals concerned and to the church communities within which they occur. Apart from high-profile cases like the Barnsley case of 1975 when an ‘exorcised’ man went home and murdered his wife in a particularly horrible fashion, there have been numerous other stories emerging from Charismatic churches where enthusiasm for this ministry has caused damage and abuse. I investigated some of these cases when I was doing research for my book Ungodly Fear at the end of the 90s. What I found apart from individuals whose lives had been traumatised by a diagnosis of demonic possession were churches who were living in what Professor Andrew Walker calls a ‘paranoid universe’. This paranoia had been inculcated by listening to numerous sermons on the pervasiveness of evil in the world where Satan, it seemed, had free rein and was held back only by the prayer of faithful Bible-believing Christians. This paranoia was also being fed by the extensive popularity of the novels of Frank Peretti, the power evangelism of John Wimber and the ideas of Peter Wagner about territorial spirits. It is no coincidence that the height of the Satanic ritual abuse scare occurred at the same time as the most grotesque preaching about the power of Satan to possess and attack faithful Christians in many churches.
When I was a student in the 1960s, mention of exorcism and a deliverance ministry was always associated with Roman Catholic or certain select Anglo-Catholic clergy. The evangelicals and Pentecostals may have spoken about demons in a metaphorical sense but dealing with them was left to others. The early days of the Charismatic movement, which positively affected my early ministry at the beginning of the 70s, likewise had almost no rhetoric about demonic possession nor advocated warfare against evil in a tangible form. An attempt to discern when the ‘demonic’ dimension entered into parts of the Charismatic and Evangelical world leads one back to the influence of the so-called “Fort Lauderdale Five” in the early 70s. This was a Charismatic group of prominent American leaders such as Derek Prince and Bob Mumford whose ideas on shepherding had a decisive and often baneful effect on much of what transpired within the movement both in the States and in the UK. The ideas of possession seem to have been taught from the same source and passed on through the same networks, most notably the Dales Bible Weeks of the 70s and 80s. The pace increased with the American publication of a book in 1980, Michelle Remembers, a work of ‘religious pornography’ which purported to tell the story of the memories of a girl who had been Satanically and ritually abused. The book was later found to have been a complete fabrication. The effect of this and other books in the early to mid-80s could be said to have begun what one American writer called a ‘moral panic’ among many Evangelical and Charismatic Christians. Many conferences were teaching the idea that Satan was alive and well and that the only protection from his depredations was to be found in the safety of a biblically sound church. Eventually the paranoia and fear engendered by these beliefs spilled out from the churches into wider Britain and social workers and police were being lectured by ‘experts’ on Satanic abuse from America. A string of television programmes also fed these ideas to a wider public. The stage was set for the terrifying events of Cleveland and Orkney and the belief that children everywhere were being targeted by hundreds of black-cloaked Satanists. Eventually the Government stepped in and commissioned a report from the anthropologist Jean La Fontaine. Her 1994 report and the subsequent book, Speak of the Devil, Tales of satanic abuse in contemporary England, stopped the paranoia beyond the churches. Suddenly it was no longer acceptable for social workers to interpret cases of child abuse as being satanically inspired. But the public memory of the satanic abuse affair of the early 90s may well have led many to expect something far more dramatic from an exorcism than what was witnessed last Thursday.
Within the charismatic churches themselves the demonic beliefs of the 80s and 90s have been slower to disperse. A popular widespread belief among some church people of the power of Satan over ordinary people has retained considerable strength for several reasons. In the first place the idea of everything that we loathe and detest in other people and in society as being attributable to Satan performs the psychological function we describe as “projection”. When evil is pushed ‘outwards’ beyond the group it leaves those left ‘inside’ feeling pure and good. Projection also has the effect of binding the projecting group closer together. Such closeness strengthens the leadership of the group or church. A further reason for the popularity for demonic beliefs is the attractiveness of the body of beliefs we call dualism. Dualism has always been popular because it has an attractive simplicity about it. Everything is good or bad and moral dilemmas are thus much simpler because there are no ambiguities, no greys, only the blacks or whites of moral certainty. Certainty will always have an attraction about it and will draw those who want to have others to do their thinking for them. Sadly churches often appear to be havens for individuals who neither want to think for themselves not want to accept responsibility for a thought-out belief system of their own.
The programme on Thursday 24th February saw much evidence of a Christian worldview which could only negotiate within the certainties of the dualistic outlook. But the change that could be observed from what would have been offered ten years ago was a low key, non-combative approach to evil. Trevor Newport, a deliverance minister from the church of Life Changing Ministries, offered a gentle healing prayer for Colin without any of the high drama of Charismatic exorcisms that have been described to me from the 80s and 90s. What perhaps we were witnessing was a dilution of the sense of pervasive evil that so clearly marked the charismatic world over the past couple of decades which the rest of society, having been sufficiently infected by the pervasive paranoia, was prepared indirectly to collude with. Now that society has moved away from that paranoia almost totally, this indirect support for dramatic confrontational exorcism is simply absent and the charismatic churches can no longer operate in the same way. Such a movement away from the practice of the 80s and 90s is greatly to be welcomed. When ‘deliverance’ is offered as a gentle prayer ministry and not as some path to power on behalf of an ambitious Christian leader it will have little danger of damaging its clients. Conversely it may do some good in bringing peace and wholeness to sad vulnerable individuals.
Stephen Parsons