Today I surfed onto a blog belonging to a fundamentalist/evangelical Christian named Hank Hanegraaff, who runs something called the Christian Research Institute (CRI).

He seems to be, in some ways, one of the more honest and reasonable evangelical Christian public figures. Back in the early 1990’s, CRI published some articles debunking the “Satanic ritual abuse” scare , for which I would like to thank him. Back then, standing up against the SRA scare required quite a bit of courage.

In most other ways, though, I still have to regard him as being very much in the enemy camp, for reasons aptly summed up here on RationalWiki (although, as I’ll detail later, the RationalWiki page contains some inaccuracies).

Anyhow, I would like to call attention to some things he says that are of interest both to Satanists and to Pagan Witches.

Hanegraaff on Satanism and Pagan Witchcraft

Although I do appreciate the stand he took against the SRA scare back in the 1990’s, his page Satanism and Witchcraft: Is Satanism the Same as Witchcraft? contains some erroneous statements about Satanism. For example: “Now, while witches deny the existence of Satan as a personal being, most Satanists affirm just the opposite. All Satanists believe in, call on, pray to, and worship Satan, although they may differ on their individual conception of Satan.”

The best-known and most public form of Satanism, LaVeyan Satanism, is atheistic, and certainly does not “affirm … the existence of Satan as a personal being.” Of course, we theistic Satanists do exist too. But even some theistic Satanists (those who revere Satan as a deity) are allergic to the term “worship,” and even some theistic Satanists do not regard Satan as “personal.”

Hanegraaff then says, “Furthermore, Satanists generally believe that magical rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices are the keys to increasing personal power. Thus, they regard sacrificial offerings (whether symbolic or actual) as a legitimate and even desirable means to achieve their own ends.” Even among theistic Satanists, most do not believe in “sacrificial offerings,” as far as I can tell.

Hanegraaff seems to have accepted many Pagan Witches’ would-be monopolization of the term “witch.” He uses the term “witch” (lower-case W) as a synonym for “Pagan Witch” (an adherent of a specific modern religious movement). He correctly notes that Pagan Witchcraft does not include Satan in its pantheon, but he seems unaware that the word “witch” (and the existence of self-described “witches”) pre-dates the modern Pagan Witchcraft movement.

Terminology aside, his description of the beliefs of many Pagan Witches is essentially correct, though a bit overgeneralized.

Nevertheless, like nearly all fundamentalist/evangelical Christians, he then says: “Witchcraft and Satanism are equally satanic in the sense that they both oppose God’s teachings and are demonically inspired (Deut. 18:9-14; cf. Gal. 5:19-20).” To Pagan Witches, he concedes only that “we must draw the distinction between these two religions so that we can respond to them with intelligence and in a relevant manner.”

Similarly he says, in a blog post titled Our Heavenly Father:

In fact, Jesus made it clear that there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who should refer to Satan as “our father” and those who can legitimately refer to God as “our Father who art in heaven.” There simply is no other option.

Note to Pagan Witches: Statements like the above are the best you can possibly hope for from most fundamentalist/evangelical Christian leaders, including even the relatively reasonable ones who understand that Pagan Witchcraft is not Satanism. As Hanegraaff’s example illustrates, it is easier to convince fundamentalist/evangelical Christian leaders that Satanists aren’t all a bunch of baby-eating monsters (and neither are Pagan Witches) than to convince them that any religion other than their own isn’t “Satanic” or “demon-inspired.”

Note to Satanists: Hanegraaff’s statements are a good example of what Satan means to those Christian leaders who promote belief in the Devil. To him, Satan rules the entire human realm outside his little Christian box. Note that Hanegraaff does not equate Satan with any particular economic system (such as laissez-faire capitalism — most fundamentalist/evangelical Christians are not socialists, and many are Republicans). Nor does he equate Satan with war (which I suspect he regards as sometimes justified), or the death penalty (which I suspect he regards as sometimes justified, too, though I could be wrong about this), or even vengeance (many conservative Christians would not be above filing lawsuits under certain circumstances, for example). Rather, he equates Satan, primarily, with all theological doctrines other than his own.

The RationalWiki page on Hank Hanegraaff

Earlier, I mentioned this RationalWiki page about Hank Hanegraaff. While I agree with its sentiments for the most part, it contains as least two inaccuracies:

(1) Although Hanegraaff is indeed a creationist and has written a book denouncing evolution, his is apparently not a young-earth creationist. He seems to be neutral on young-earth creationism vs. the scientifically accepted age of the universe (as explained here).

(2) He does not absolutely forbid all birth control. (For example, he published Should Christians Use Birth Control? by H. Wayne House, which takes a middle-of-the-road position on contraception.)

But he does indeed oppose all abortion and does believe, apparently, that full-fledged “human life” begins at conception. And he does indeed have 12 children, and dismisses overpopulation as even a potential threat. (I wonder, does he even know what exponential growth is?) And, of course, he opposes gay rights.

The Rational Wiki page also links to a page of personal accusations against Hank Hanegraaff by a daughter of Walter Martin, founder of CRI. I have no idea whether the accusations are true. H.ere is his reply to some of the allegations.

The RationalWiki page also says that Hanegraaff’s “reputation as a voice of intelligence and moderation within evangelical Christendom” is “wholly undeserved.” No, it’s not “wholly” undeserved. As the RationalWiki page goes on to acknowledge, he frequently debunks claims by the wackier evangelists. And I don’t think it’s fair to call him a “stopped clock.” It is true that even the most reasonable (relatively speaking) fundamentalist/evangelical Christians, such as Hanegraaff, hold some very irrational and deleterious beliefs. Even his attitudes are clearly bad news for the rest of us. But we should acknowledge a spectrum here, rather than descend to black-and-white “they’re all exactly alike” thinking.

Below are some of the articles Hanegraaff published against the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare of the 1980’s and early 1990’s:

• The Hard Facts About Satanic Ritual Abuse by Bob and Gretchen Passantino
• Second thoughts about Recovered Memories by Paul Simpson
• The Bondage Maker: Examining The Message and Method of Neil T. Anderson. Part Four: Spiritual Warfare and the Myth of Satanic Conspiracies and Ritual Abuse by Bob and Gretchen Passantino (part of a series of artcles listed here)

In the General feedback thread,

Hi Ms. Vera, I’m trying to write a novel utilizing themes of pagan symbolism in Christianity as part of the plot device … , but thus far I have not located a great source documenting the history of that symbolism.

I’m writing to you to ask if you could recommend any such sources that I can use to research.

I’m sorry — this is not a topic I’ve researched in depth. If anyone else here is knowledgeable about this, I too would be interested in recommendations of good scholarly sources on this topic.

You also wrote: “(if you’ve seen the Zeitgeist documentary on YouTube, that gives you some idea)”

Ugh. Zeitgeist. Definitely not a good source on anything. Amd full of grand conspiracy ideology and other related nonsense, e.g. regarding the Federal Reserve System. For some debunking, see Resources for debunking grand conspiracy claims, and for documenting their political significance.

In the general feedback thread, meowmixeater asked me one of the usual questions that Christians commonly ask theistic Satanists: “Do you believe that satan is actually more powerful than God? If so why?”

My answers to that question can be found here:

• Post-Copernican natural theology
• The here-and-now principle in theology
• Theology of the Church of Azazel

If you have further questions, feel free to post them as a comment here.

Here on WordPress, I just now came across a blog with some fascinating, very informative, and disturbing posts about today’s African witchhunts:

• Nigerian Christians join in witchhunts – 18 December 2007
• African neopentecostals battle witchcraft in the West – 24 December 2007
• Witchcraft, African and European – 6 April 2008

They pretty much confirm what I already knew, but provide more historical details. The author is apparently South African and a believer in Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

P.S.: I just now came across an old post on Marie Ravensoul’s blog, Christian Rapper Calls for the Killing of Witches and the Slaying of Demons. It seems that the song is paralleling real-life trends, alas.

I came across an interesting post here on WordPress about Halloween, with a lot of annoted info about the ancient Celts, the Druids, Samhain, and the evolution of Halloween festivities. Written from a Christian anti-occultist “ex-witch” perspective, but much more scholarly than most. Among other things, this article points out how little is known, historically, about the religion and customs of the ancient Celts. For example, there’s not enough evidence to know for sure whether the ancient Celts practiced human sacrifice, and it’s not even known for sure whether they had a feast day called Samhain.

However, like a lot of other relatively well-informed writings, this article seems to assume that all Satanists are LaVeyans.

After posting my recent blog entries on same-sex marriage and religious right wing groups here in New York, I clicked on the tags “gay rights” and “same-sex marriage” to see what, if anything, other people on WordPress.com were writing about these topics. Among other things, I came across a few different blogs in which there was some agonizing over whether it was okay to feel good about the death of Jerry Falwell.

I agree with those who say it’s fine to feel good about the death of someone who has caused so much misery for so many people, especially if you yourself happen to be one of those people.

But I do think we should refrain from expressing any such happy feelings in a truly tasteless manner, such as by picketing Falwell’s funeral a la Fred Phelps and his clan.

Guess what? The Phelps clan will be picketing Falwell’s funeral, or so says this news story on 365Gay.com. Apparently Falwell wasn’t homophobic enough for Fred Phelps, who, according to the 354Gay.com article, complains that Falwell “spent his entire life prophesying lies and false doctrines like ‘God loves everyone.’” (P.S.: I’ve subsequently confirned this story. The front page of the Phelps clan’s website God Hates America now proclaims their intent to “preach” at Falwell’s funeral.)

Anyhow, I also suspect that some folks may be rejoicing out of a mistaken belief that the death of Falwell was a crippling blow to the religious right wing. That it most definitiely wasn’t. Although he was a kingmaker in the early 1980’s, Falwell has not played nearly as significant role in the religious right wing since then. His “Moral Majority” was soon eclipsed by Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition as the leading religious right wing organization. More recently, the most powerful leader of the religious right wing now seems to be James Dobson.

In my previous post, I mentioned a brief news story about the Coalition to Save Marriage in New York. I just now found that group’s website here. Their links page provides a handy list of major right wing groups here in New York State.

Of course, as I hope will be obvious to nearly everyone who would bother to read my blog, the Coalition’s name is just plain idiotic. Exactly how is the legalization of same-sex marriage going to destroy or in any way harm heterosexual marriages???

Anne F. Downey, co-chairwoman of the Coalition to Save Marriage in New York, is a lawyer practicing in the Town of Boston, according to the brief bio following an op-ed by her in the Buffalow News.

According to a page on the Albany Times-Union site:

The group’s steering committee includes the Rev. Duane Motley of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, a frequent face at the Capitol on hot-button issues. Among the advisors is Mike Long, the state Conservative Party chairman. Signing on to a position statement opposing same-sex marriage were such groups as the New York Christian Coalition and New York Family Policy Council.

The Times-Union site also has a PDF copy of a press release by the Coalition to Save Marriage in New York.

The coalition’s site’s links page lists the following:

• New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms (NYCF) – “The Christian Voice in Albany,” run by Rev. Duane Motley, who claims to be “New York State’s only full time Christian Lobbyist. Lobbying on Religious, Family and Moral issues.” Well, nice to know there’s only one, if indeed that’s the case.
• Concerned Women for America of New York (CWA of NY) – local chapter of one of the older national religious right wing organizations. The national organization is run by Beverly LaHaye, wife of Tim LaHaye, author of the “Left Behind” series and one of the leading members of Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” back in the 1970’s.
• New York Family Policy Council – an evangelical Christian-oriented group. Judging by its name, I would have expected this to be an affiliate of James Dobson’s empire, but I find no reference to Dobson or his organizations in any conspicuous part of the site such as the About page. Lots of very scary rhetoric about Christians “occupying” the rest of society.
• New York State Christian Coalition. Judging by its name, this would seem to be a local branch of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, though the website doesn’t say so, at least not on any page I’ve looked at so far.
• The Association of Politically Active Christians (APAC) – run by some evangelical Christians.
• Caucus for America, run by Rabbi Aryeh Spero.
• New York State Catholic Conference – this site appears to be entirely in Chinese (or some closely related Asian language), at least on the browser where I am working now. I’ll see later if it still is on my computer at home. Seems strange that a New York “Catholic Conference” website would be in Chinese; I didn’t know that there were that many Chinese-American Catholics.
• The Conservative Party of New York State – site contains a link to What Is Conservativism?, an interesting collection of articles about the Conservative movement in the U.S.A., on the website of the American Conservative Union Foundation

.

I just now came across the following:

• In Brazil, pope to face a church losing hold
  Priest shortage, evangelicals represent challenges
  By Monte Reel
  Washington Post, via MSNBC
  Updated: 4:02 a.m. ET May 9, 2007

This article said some things I expected, such as the following:

Latin America is still predominantly Catholic, but not like it used to be. In Brazil, for example, as evangelical Pentecostalism has spread, the country’s population has gone from being 89 percent Catholic in 1980 to about 64 percent today, according to a survey released this week by the Brazilian polling firm DataFolha.

But there were also some surprises (to me, anyway). In particular:

Young people have shown a greater reluctance to join the clergy, resulting in a priest shortage that is 10 times more severe regionwide than it is in North America or Europe.

…

“There is a trend here — even among priests — that people should be more free to follow their own conscience, and there’s a growing distance between most Catholics and the church’s hierarchy,” said the Rev. Luiz Roberto Benedetti, a Catholic priest who is a professor of social science at the Catholic University of Campinas, near Sao Paulo. “It’s a trend that goes in the complete opposite direction of the message that the pope wants to send.”

Very interesting, and quite contrary to Philip Jenkins’s characterization of the Catholicism of the southern hemisphere, in general, as a hotbed of Catholic traditionalism and love of hierarchy. (See The Next Christianity by Philip Jenkins, originally published in The Atlantic, Volume 290, No. 3, October, 2002, about the recent explosive growth of the more fanatical forms of Christianity in non-Western countries.)

I would be interested to hear from anyone who can give me solidly sourced information about religious trends in Latin America.

(For more about religious trends in general, see the many articles listed on my page about The growing number of Christians of kinds which inherently fear demons, Satanists, witches, occultists, Pagans, and atheists.)

Eariler today I posted a blog entry titled “Fringe cults”, about the debate following “The Devil Is In The Details” on the blog “Sailing to Byzantium.”

In response to my initial reply to “unitedcats,” I got replies not only from “unitedcats” himself but also from another person:

katyjane wrote::
April 18th, 2007 at 5:28 pm

dianavera… are you not guilty, in that last line, or doing the same thing you decried of unitedcats? Why would non-mainstream folks be “even more varied” than mainstream folks?

You get some pretty different ideas, regardless of where you’re looking.

I replied:

Diane Vera wrote::
April 20th, 2007 at 10:56 am

katyjane wrote:

“dianavera… are you not guilty, in that last line, or doing the same thing you decried of unitedcats? Why would non-mainstream folks be ‘even more varied’ than mainstream folks?”

Obviously there are more ways to differ from the norm than there are ways to be normal. That’s simple math.

Of course it’s true that even amongst “normal” folks there is quite a bit of variety.

I would add now that what I was doing was not at all the same thing that I (perhaps incorrectly) perceived that “unitedcats” was doing. I was not making a generalization about all people outside of some norm of my own.

As it turns out, I may have misperceived what “unitedcats” meant by “fringe cults.” (See my previous post,“Fringe cults”.)

Admittedly my reply to “katyjane” was rather abrupt, since I was arguing what seemed to me to be an extremely obvious point. But apparently it wasn’t.

katyjane wrote::
April 20th, 2007 at 11:14 am

Diane wrote:
“Obviously there are more ways to differ from the norm than there are ways to be normal. That’s simple math.

Of course it’s true that even amongst “normal” folks there is quite a bit of variety.”

It’s not simple math. If you asked me what ‘normal’ was, and then asked someone else, you’d have different answers. The math would be fuzzy at best.

Kullervo wrote::
April 20th, 2007 at 11:29 am

Indeed. There are as many ways to be “normal” as there are normal people. No two people are exactly the same. Not only is “normal” completely subjective, but it’s a continuum.

So I tried again:

Diane Vera wrote::
April 20th, 2007 at 11:40 am

Katyjane, what does the word “normal” mean to you?

To me, “normal” means “fitting into some norm.”

For example, here in the U.S.A., the majority of people are Christian; hence it’s “normal” to be Christian. Obviously there are many different non-Christian religions, and many of them differ from each other as much as or more than they differ from Christianity. For example, Judaism and Islam are staunchly monotheistic, whereas the Pagan Reconstructionist religions are staunchly polytheistic. Christianity it basically monotheistic, except that the “Trinity” idea looks borderline polythiestic and “idolatrous” to Jews and Muslims.

In the case of religion, one could expand one’s idea of “normal” to refer not just to Christians but also to several other “great” religions. But this still leaves thousands of other religions that differ from the so-called “great” religions — and from each other — in one way or another.

In retrospect, I see that I overgeneralized a bit about Christianity in the above. There do exist non-Trinitarian Christians, although the vast majority of Christians do believe in the Trinity, which has been considered by most to be the “normal” (i.e. “orthodox”) Christian belief for nearly all of Christianity’s history. But I also overgeneralized a bit about Jews. It can be argued (as some mainstream Jews have argued) that Jewish Kabbalists’ belief in the ten Sephiroth is as borderline-polytheistic as the Trinity. There is plenty of variation in belief among Jews, as there also is among Muslims, not to mention all the world’s many other religions, as well as among Christians Anyhow:

Diane Vera wrote::
April 20th, 2007 at 11:45 am

Kullervo:

“Indeed. There are as many ways to be “normal” as there are normal people. No two people are exactly the same. Not only is ‘normal’ completely subjective, but it’s a continuum.”

True. Still, no matter how you define “normal,” there will be more ways to differ from your norm than there are ways to fit within it.

Diane Vera wrote::
April 20th, 2007 at 12:03 pm

As for the “simple math” I referred to earlier:

Suppose you define “normal” as “having both trait A and trait B” (regardless of what traits A and B might actually be). There are three ways to differ from this norm:

• having trait A but not B
• having trait B but not A
• having neither trait A nor trait B

Likewise, suppose you define “normal” as “having traits A, B, and C” (again, regardless of what A, B, and C actually are). There are at least seven ways to differ from this norm:

• having trait A and B but not C
• having trait B and C but not A
• having trait A and C but not B
• having trait A but neither B nor C
• having trait B but neither A nor C
• having trait C but neither A nor B
• having none of traits A, B, or B

More generally, the number of ways to differ from your norm varies exponentially with the number of traits considered. if your definition of “normal” encompasses N traits, then the number of ways to differ from that norm is at least 2 to the N-1 power.

Not only that, but, for any given trait A, there is usually more than one way to be not-A, as in my religion example (where A = Christianity and not-A = the many non-Christian religions).

In that last paragraph I should have acknowledged that there is often more than one way to be A, as well as more than one way to be not-A. However, as in the religion example, the number of possible ways to be not-A would in most cases be vastly greater than the number of possible ways to be A, if A is any standard of “normality.”

Before I finished writing that last reply, the following also appeared:

Kullervo wrote::
April 20th, 2007 at 11:48 am

“Still, no matter how you define “normal,” there will be more ways to differ from your norm than there are ways to fit within it.”

You say that like it’s a truism, but I challenge your assertion.

To which I replied:

Diane Vera wrote::
April 20th, 2007 at 12:04 pm

Kullervo wrote: “You say that like it’s a truism, but I challenge your assertion.”

I challenge you to give me a counter-example.

At that point Kullervo decided to cut off the discussion:

Kullervo wrote::
April 20th, 2007 at 12:20 pm

Your simple math makes unfounded assumptions that “normalcy” is expressed in terms of simple traits with an on-off swtich. Like I said, most things that peope would come up with as “normal” are really points on a broad continuum.

For example, it is a misleading oversimplification to try to say that “Normal” means the trait “Christian.” There are as many different kinds of Christians as there are peoplwho call themselves Christian, with differences in approaches, attitudes, theological views, soteriology, etc. I don’t have to give you a counter-example, anyway. You’re the one making broad assertions.

Here’s what it boils down to: you’re mostly just arguing to argue, and I don’t want that here on my blog, so knock it off. Thanks.

No, I was NOT arguing just to argue.

I was offended by what I saw, perhaps incorrectly, as an egregious insult (by “unitedcats”) against all people of all nonmainstream religions.

I then pursued this discussion out of sheer startlement, then befuddlement, and finally sheer curiosity. I wondered — and still wonder — how any reasonably well-educated person could seriously believe that, whatever one’s own personal idea of a “norm” might happen to be, it isn’t just a tiny slice of the vast array of other possibilities? Of course, I do know that this kind of myopia is perfectly natural. It is all too easy for people to oversimplify “the other”; to see the world outside one’s own little box as a more-or-less undifferentiated blur, compared to the greater variety that one can more easily see within one’s own little box. However, in my experience, most educated people, other than dogmatic ideologues, are aware of this fallacy and can can easily recognize it when it is pointed out to them. “Kullervo” and “katyjane” both seem like reasonably well-educated people, and they do not seem like dogmatic ideologues, e.g. they don’t come across as the sort of Christians who believe that the differences amongst non-Christians are insignificant, compared to the differences amongst Christians, because all non-Christians are just going to hell anyway. On the contrary, “Kullervo,” the owner of the blog, actually seemed quite open-minded about LaVeyan Satanism. So, what on Earth was going on here?

Anyhow, to reply to Kullervo’s last reply to me:

Yes, I oversimplified by talking in discrete binary terms rather than continuous terms. However, similar principles do apply to continuous random variables as well. For example, on a bell curve, the portion of the X-axis that falls within one standard deviation of the mean is just a tiny slice of the entire infinitely long X-axis. Likewise the portion of the X-axis that falls within N standard deviations of the mean, no matter how large N is. And, again, all the more so is this true for a multi-dimensional distribution.

Yes, there is a wide variety of Christian beliefs. But do you deny that the range of variation of beliefs within the totality of all non-Christian religions is even greater than the range of variation of beliefs among Christians? How could it possibly not be?

Also, among Christians, there is a very specific set of beliefs which are held by the majority of Christians and which are considered by most Christian theologians to be “normal,” i.e. “orthodox,” whereas other Christian beliefs are deemed “hereticsl.” Obviously the range of variation of possible “heretical” Christian beliefs is far greater than the range of possible “orthodox” Christian beliefs — even though there is quite a bit of variation allowed within “orthodoxy” too, on matters considered “nonessential.”

To give yet another example from math (this one is only an example): The numbers that most people work with, most of the time, are rational numbers. So, in a sense, rational numbers can be considered “normal” numbers. But irrational numbers vastly outnumber rational numbers.

Anyhow, earlier today I posted on Kullervo’s blog an apology for the abrupt tone of some of my comments, and for not complimenting him earlier on his original post.

Shortly after writing my first two posts here on this new blog of mine a few days ago, I looked at WordPress’s listing for the Satanism tag, to see if my post on Satanic panic in Russia? had appeared there yet. It hadn’t, but my eye was caught by a blog entry titled “The Devil Is In The Details” on a blog called “Sailing to Byzantium.” The post was about Anton LaVey. I agreed with most of the what the author had to say. I was glad to see his open-mindedness about LaVeyan Satanism, but I also agree with most of his stated reservations about it, as well as with most of what he said he liked about it.

Then I looked down at the comments and came across the following:

unitedcats wrote::
March 4th, 2007 at 12:59 am

I would have to agree, all fringe cults are pretty much the same. Satanism, UFO cultists, whatever…just lost souls who want to be special somehow and don’t have much identity of their own. Mostly harmless, I mean things like the Solar Temple, Jim Jones, Aun Shimrikyo make the news…but there must be million’s of people in fringe cults around the world so the dangerous ones are the exception, not the rule. And mostly dangerous to their own members even when they do go nuts. Often confused too, like the dyslexic Satanist who sold his soul to Santa. ;) JMO —Doug

Startled by this person’s claim that “all fringe cults” (apparently including all the many different kinds of Satanism???) are “all … pretty much the same,” and that their adnerents are all “just lost souls who want to be special somehow and don’t have much identity of their own,” I quickly dashed off the following reply:

dianevera wrote::
April 18th, 2007 at 12:39 pm

unitedcats, you sure do generalize about people in “all fringe cults,” claiming that they are all “just lost souls who want to be special somehow and don’t have much identity of their own.” People in nonmainstream religions have a variety of different motives, just as people in mainstream religions do. You have fallen into the common human tendency to oversimplify and to be socially dualistic, to see everyone outside one’s own little box as being fundamentally all alike. But that’s an error — they aren’t all alike. Nonmainstream folks are even more varied than mainstream folks.

As we will see later, I may have misunderstood what “unitedcats” meant by “fringe cults.” I got the impression that, by “all fringe cults,” he was referring to all nonmainstream religions. He may have meant to refer just to the more authoritarian, “brainwashing,” and controlling ones, rather than to nonmainstream religions in general. Or does he perhaps believe that all nonmainstream religions are “cults” in the authoritarian/”brainwashing”/controlling sense? If so, that belief is wrong. Or does he perhaps believe that all forms of Satanism are “cults” in the authoritarian/”brainwashing”/controlling sense? If so, that belief is wrong too. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to ask these questions in my reply.

A few days after I posted my reply, I came back and saw a bunch of replies to me from a few different people, including the following from “unitedcats”:

unitedcats wrote::
April 18th, 2007 at 10:50 pm

I could have stated my point better, I wasn’t saying they are all the same, I was saying they do all share some common traits.

To which I replied:

Diane Vera wrote::
April 20th, 2007 at 11:01 am

unitedcats wrote:

“I wasn’t saying they are all the same, I was saying they do all share some common traits.”

Well, I totally disagree with you about the alleged common traits too. You say they are all “lost souls who want to be special somehow and don’t have much identity of their own.” Some folks are nonmainstream for precisely the opposite reason — they have too strong a sense of their own identity to be able to stomach certain conventional expectations.

Really it’s not a good idea go generalize about the motives of people in a wide variety of nonmainstream religions.

Diane Vera wrote::
April 20th, 2007 at 11:03 am

Oops! I meant to say, “Really it’s not a good idea TO generalize ….”

“Unitedcats” owns a blog called “Doug’s Darkworld,” which contains mostly pretty sensible commentary on a variety of topics, mostly political. He seems to be on the whole well-informed, but he seems unaware of some of the most significant religious trends. For example, in a post titled Conservapedia to liberal bias to why the USA will get national health care soon, he wrote: “Now as a codicil, when talking about conservatives and Conservapedia, I am talking about a very small group of people (Dear God, I hope it’s a small group of people) who take the Bible literally and pretty much reject everything that came after Newton.” Alas, folks who take the Bible literally are not a very small group of people. They are a very big group of people, and growing like wildfire worldwide. Someplace else on his blog, if I recall correctly, Doug mentioned that he is living in Berkeley. Most likely, Biblical literalists are indeed a very small portion of the population of Berkeley. But, alas, Berkeley is not the world, nor is Berkeley even typical of the bulk of the U.S.A. See the following:

• Various poll results about creationist vs. evolutionist beliefs in the U.S.A., on the Religious Tolerance site
• A BBC article about a creationist school in the U.K., of all places
• My page of links to many articles on the explosive worldwide growth of the more fanatical and fundy forms of Christianity

Anyhow, back on “Sailing to Byzantium,” Doug responded to me as follows:

unitedcats wrote:
April 20th, 2007 at 1:01 pm

People with a strong sense of their identity…don’t join cults. Being in a cult is about as antithetical to having one’s own identity as it gets. Cults in fact go to great lengths to discourage their members from having their own identity through a vast array of brain washing and control techniques. And studying people and making observations is not the same as making generalizations.

To Doug:

First off, I think we may be having a misunderstanding over the term “fringe cult.” If you’re talking about “cults” as in “authoritarian cults,” then I agree that they are incompatible with having a strong sense of one’s own identity. However:

(1) In my opinion, this is true of many relatively mainstream authoritarian religious groups too, including many fundy churches, not just “fringe cults.” If your objection is to religious groups that are authoritarian, “brainwashing,” and controlling, why single out the “fringe” ones rather than complain about “cults” in general? (Perhaps, living in Berkeley, you think of even relatively mainstream fundy churches as “fringe”?)

(2) I was under the impression (perhaps mistaken) that by “fringe cult” you were referring to all nonmainstream religions, not just the authoritarian, “brainwashing,” controlling kind. After all, you seemed to be classifying all of Satanism as a “fringe cult.” It is certainly not true that Satanism, as a whole, is a “cult” in the authoritarian/”brainwashing”/controlling sense. There are groups within the Satanist scene that can be considered cultish in that sense, but the Satanist scene as a whole is quite varied. Most forms of Satanism encourage thinking for oneself. (Of course Satanism has its share of hypocrites just like any other religious category.)

So, in my initial reply to you, I was reacting to what came across to me as an extremely insulting overgeneralization about all people in all nonmainstream religions, whether authoritarian or non-authoritarian. I’m sorry if I misunderstood you.

If by “fringe cult” you meant to refer only to cults in the authoritarian sense, I still think that your statement about the motives of all adherents of all such groups is an overgeneralization, though not as egregious an overgeneralization as it would be if you were referring to all adherents of all nonmainstream religions, as I thought you were.

It should be noted that many “fringe cults” lose a lot of members, so their “brainwashing” isn’t terribly effective in many cases. The members who leave must not be totally lacking in a sense of personal identity.

As for “studying people and making observations” vs. “making generalizations,” any declarative sentence containing the word “all” is a universal generalization, by definition, no matter what it’s based on. Many generalizations are based on observations. Generalizations aren’t necessarily bad if they are well-tested. The “laws” of physics are generalizations — which have, in many cases turned out to be limited in scope, but still very good approximations within their scope. However, we run into trouble when we generalize about people outside of our own personal experience. Scientific methodology in the social sciences is extremely tricky. Informal knowledge about people is even trickier.

I recently ran into the following two stories, both on the website of Baptist Press in Tennessee:

• A ticket from Satanism to holiness by Gwan Garrison, April 2, 2007
• Many Satanists prefer the shadows , by Joe Westbury, Posted on Apr 2, 2007

Gwan Garrison claims to be an ex-Satanist. Googling “Satanism Gwan Garrison,” I found the following earlier versions of the above two articles, on Christian Index, a Georgia Baptist site:

• The devil had my heart, but Christ wanted my soul by Gwan Garrison, Pastor, Franklin Baptist Church, March 29, 2007
• Satanism: a real force in the world March 29, 2007

His bio seemed awfully fishy to me.

I also found some witty and thought-provoking commentary on About.com, on Witchvox, and on J-Walk Blog.

On About.com, in an article titled “Satanic Panic, or ‘I was a Satanic Witch (No, Really, I Could Fly and Everything!)’,” Jennifer Emick sums up Gwan Garrison’s story as follows:

Baptist Pastor Gwan Garrison talks about how much he enjoyed “persecuting Christians,” and he’s sure to mention (with the amount of accuracy typical in these stories) his “Satanic altar” and his “crystals.” It’s light fare compared to some of these stories- no bloody sacrifices, no marriages to Satan- but there is a glowering cat and a high-voltage Satanic bible- and there is, of course, that ever-present character, the tirelessly persistent evangelical whose refusal to stop pestering the ungodly results in his miraculous transformation.

On Witchvox, Richard Brownbear remarks in a comment:

The same old “I had the world in the palm of my hand with everything that I wanted, but then gave it all up FER JAYZUS” manufactured story.

Of course, on Witchvox, there are also a few of the usual attempts by Pagan Witches to claim exclusive possession of the word “witch” (claiming that all witches, not just Pagan Witches, are “not Satanists”). These folks repeat some of the usual Pagan misconceptions about Satanism (e.g. “only renegade christians worship the christian devil because only christians believe in him at all”). But, surprisingly, there were not too many of those in the comments on Witchvox.

On J-Walk Blog, in a post titled “Protecting Yourself From Satanic Spells,” Gwan Garrison is quoted as saying, “The power over Christians was less effective, while those without a strong commitment to Christ were more vulnerable.” In response to this, someone named Sheldon says in a comment:

My experience has been the opposite. The more a person believes in Jesus, the more they accept that Satan exists. The more they believe Satan exists, the greater the fear of black magic, and the less amount of time I have to wait in line at the grocery store.

A Russian Orthodox public movement called the “People’s Council” has made some ill-informed, panic-stricken claims about Satanism:

• “People’s Council urges authorities to equate Satanists to terrorists,” Interfax-Religion, Russia – Apr 2, 2007

It released a statement claiming that “ritual murders” and various other nasty activities are all “characteristic of Satanic organizations.”

The statement is said to mention several ritual murders including the allegedly notorious “murder of three Optino monks killed by a Satanist on Orthodox Easter.” (I found no further information about this crime via Google.)

The statement also says, “There is an enormous number of Satanic organizations and groups acting in Russia today. Many of them are united in a single branchy network.”

Yeah, right.

The statement then goes on the mention the “Church of the Satan” [sic], failing to note that the Church of Satan has been an above-ground organization for over 40 years and does NOT endorse any kind of criminal activity.

I found the following blog entry:

• “‘Satanists as dangerous as terrorists! World at risk from Satan cults’ claim Russian Orthodox,” Signs of Witness

It closes with the comment, “It could be that Religious Right Hysteria is the real ‘danger to Society…’”