The Demon Slayers

July 18, 2024 5:25 AM

To fans and foes alike, he comes across as an outrageous yahoo, and he knows it, a Chick tract come to life for internet virality. (slLongreads, Harper's)
posted by Kitteh (16 comments total)

Now, he tells me, his child has been talking about suicide, a potential sign of some persistent demonic oppression, even after a series of exorcisms.

Fuck the “no LOL religion” bullshit, “exorcisms” have always been an excuse to torment and demonize mental illness or anything that doesn’t conform to what the theocrats want.
posted by star gentle uterus at 5:57 AM on July 18 [12 favorites]

So, I can't help but wonder - Is there something about Demon Slayers we could report them to the IRS for, as a violation of its tax-exempt status?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:59 AM on July 18 [4 favorites]

The most popular scripture among the Slayers may be from Mark 16, wherein a miraculously resurrected Jesus appears to his disciples, delivering a message that is at once dare and promise:

“And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them…”

If they aren’t handling rattlesnakes and drinking strychnine, then they are just a bunch of posers.
posted by TedW at 7:00 AM on July 18 [7 favorites]

This sort of religious extremism is dangerous. And seems more prevalent, or at least tenacious. In a California Facebook discussion recently some horrible people were claiming that all drag was child sexual abuse or some such garbage, and one sincerely offered this as part of her argument

When Jesus was doing his earthly ministry for 3 years he cast out demons many times. I have no doubt that if He had come across a drag show for children He would have performed an exorcism right then and there.

I try to be respectful of people's religions. But the kind of belief system is harmful to our society. And growing in power. The spectacle of a performance like an exorcism is a powerful tool and is used to support all sorts of hateful ideology.
posted by Nelson at 7:32 AM on July 18 [10 favorites]

Tolerance has to be reciprocal. If your religion is coercive rather than consensual, why should you get societal approval? If your religion isn’t abusing the children raised in it, I have no reason to fight you, but sometimes it seems like the biggest draws of religion these days are unfiltered patriarchy and child abuse.
posted by rikschell at 7:56 AM on July 18 [7 favorites]

Churches of this nature present themselves as being more sincere forms of worship compared to the "lukewarm" Christianity of the mainline Protestant churches.

And they prove it by making the worship service a moment of catharsis, both for the pastor and the congregation. The catharsis makes everyone involved disinhibited, and ready to express just about any sentiment including rage (see Locke himself) as though it's godly.

The catharsis starts to get competitive, becoming narcissistic as it builds up. It's not the first time either. In St. Paul's era there was a congregation that was behaving this way and St. Paul had to call them out in one of his epistles. Two Corinthians Chapter 13 is all about that.

My ancestral church is the Scottish Presbyterians. They went through a long period of debating the relative importance of "ardor" versus "order." Presbyterians high on ardor committed genocide in Ulster in the 1600s. Their descendants after that developed a marked preference towards order. And right now I'd like to see clergy from the mainline being openly sectarian and calling out these evangelical congregations for how they erode their parishioners' self control (one of the Gifts of the Spirit) and leading them down a dark path.

This is why evangelicals have high rates of divorce. This is why their churches have so many financial and sexual scandals. I see this among my high school classmates all the time. I used to think the ones who stuck with the evangelical churches did so because they needed a place to validate them as they went through rough times. But after 7 of Trump I see the causality was reversed. Going to the wrong church every Sunday left them less able to tackle the challenges of their lives rather than more and added up to bad consequences.

I'd love to see a mainline clergyman stepping forward and just saying "y'all are doing it wrong. Fix the church organ and learn to control yourself on Sunday."
posted by ocschwar at 8:09 AM on July 18 [12 favorites]

“exorcisms” have always been an excuse to torment and demonize mental illness or anything that doesn’t

I agree that is true of the vast majority of American evangelical exorcisms, as well as many Catholic exorcisms. I do think that the practice can have a less antagonistic, harmful role in some societies, in which exorcism is part of a cultural response toental illness or emotional distress that centers the sufferer rather than the comfort of others. I am thinking here of some Mesoamerican ritual practices, or the practice of exorcism in Bon.

I have been subject to an exorcism myself. It was an Oriental Orthodox exorcism. It involves being prayed over, splashed with holy water, and gently poked with a pectoral cross. It also only happened after my bishop had gotten me in contact with psychiatric help, and made sure I was keeping up with my medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. (His statement: "It probably isn't the devil, but better safe than sorry.")
posted by pattern juggler at 8:27 AM on July 18 [8 favorites]

It may be that extreme expressions of fundamentalist Christianity are increasing - but perhaps in angry reaction to the fact that church membership is plummeting, at least in the United States. That, combined with the thrashing of white supremacy and patriarchy and homophobia in reaction to contemporary attitudes that have softened on those forms of hate, may be increasing the violence of this kind of religious practice. And its attractiveness to violent people.
posted by zenzenobia at 9:00 AM on July 18 [6 favorites]

You know, I was a kid in The Seventies. I remember In Search of… and Mister Spock telling me maybe the The Bermuda Triangle was real. I don't know what it was about listening to Led Zeppelin that made people think stuff like that was real, but it's been 40 years now. It was all horse shit.

There is no such thing as demons. That is not real. None of that supernatural mumbo-jumbo is. Mister Spock isn't real either. People need to get a grip.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:12 PM on July 18 [2 favorites]

NOBODY puts on a drag show for children

I can't believe I'm explaining this stupid woman's idea but she was talking about how Very Upset she was that a drag queen was emceeing the Pride celebration in the public square after our small town parade. We've also had drama around drag queen library readings for children.

So there was an actual performer in drag with children present. Which is wonderful and great, who doesn't want to have a real princess read Cinderella to them! I wouldn't call that a "drag show" either, in the sense of adult burlesque entertainment.

The evil lie here is how the hateful people think all drag is sexualized and harmful to children. The actual performance at our pride parade was fantastic and hilarious and very modest, in no way objectionable as either a man, a woman, or a person in drag.

Somehow these Christians are never worried about men in priest drag around their children, despite decades of abuses from the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, and other authoritarian Christians everywhere.

Back on topic, here's The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence exorcising Florida.
posted by Nelson at 12:25 PM on July 18 [6 favorites]

Let me share my standard for evaluating Chick tracts. The dumbest guy I knew in the US Army was an avid reader. Folks, I cannot adequately convey just how dumb that is.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:19 PM on July 18

Mod note: One comment deleted. Gendered slurs and name calling go against our content policy.
posted by loup (staff) at 2:08 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]

Amongst the horrors in the article, this old Perl programmer took some delight here:

Nearby, an old woman thrashes and claws at the floor. Her face contorts in a snarl. One church staffer presses a Bible to her forehead while another daubs her stomach with a pocket-size vial of holy oil.

Two volunteers huddle for a diagnosis. “Is it Leviathan?” one asks another.

“Python,” the second responds.

The first nods, all business, then turns to the distressed woman. “Unhinge your fangs from her, in Jesus’ name! And take your venom with you, in Jesus’ name!”

Next time I have to debug that slow weird language with significant whitespace, I shall yell “And take your venom with you, in Jesus’ name!” (despite the fact that Pythonidae are famously non-venomous)
posted by scruss at 3:06 PM on July 18 [2 favorites]

To be fair, the "demon" python is named after the serpent that was supposed to have lived beneath the site of the Pythian Oracle and been slain by Apollo rather than the species. To be accurate, none of these people know that.
posted by pattern juggler at 3:43 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]

scruss, I had to admit I did the same thing! I was like, "Wait, the programming language?"

*quizzical dog head tilt*
posted by Kitteh at 5:34 PM on July 18 [3 favorites]

That's the part of the country where you get disapproving looks if you wear a t-shirt with the BSD mascot..
posted by ocschwar at 5:49 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]