Although there has never been a confirmed case of this phenomenon, the media a while back went crazy with the term "Satanic ritual abuse."
So, isn't an exorcism committed on a child "Christian ritual abuse"?
What if the kid dies from it?
A 6-year-old girl was found dead in a motel room with a broken back Monday after what police said may have been an exorcism. Two adults were arrested after they and two children were spotted on the street naked in the freezing cold.The adults, who had been staying in the motel room, were charged with cruelty to children, public indecency and obstruction of police and were taken to a psychiatric ward.
Police said the girl had been brutalized and suffered a broken back and other broken bones. An autopsy was planned.
Based on what the adults told authorities, investigators believe "they were involved possibly in a ritual of some sort,'' police spokesman John Quigley said. "It may have had something to do with undemonizing the child in some manner.'' [AP]
This isn't the only case of this type, not by a long shot.
If we're going to go by the stats, I'd say we have a lot more to fear from Jesus than the devil.
Google searches:
"ritual satanic abuse"
800 documents
"ritual christian abuse"
0 documents
(except this one, soon)
"satanic ritual abuse"
10,900 documents
"christian ritual abuse"
78 documents
(Note: Updated entry 1-19-04 6:40pm ET. Added new Google searches and changed title from "Ritual Christian abuse" to "Christian ritual abuse," to reflect the more common wording.)
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Joe
I think you'd be remiss if you didn't include catholic school in your tabulations.
2 - Josh
Well, the day of the Catholic nun with ruler in hand has long past us, thankfully.
Most of this stems from the charismatic movement in the U.S. which views the devil from an "experience" based perspective. Check out Salon.com's "How Satain is propping up Bush's war on terror" for a good explanation (even if I don't agree with the political message Salon.com thinks they need to imply with every piece of insight they provide).
3 - Josh
Oh, and another thing: Often "Ritual Satanic Abuse" is recalled via repressed memories with the aid of a supposed psychologist/psychanalyst, and many in the scientific community think it's a bunch of crap.
I know a woman who claims to have been forced to sacrifice a baby during a traumatic case of RSA. The only problem is that the there were no missing babies reported in the area at the time she supposedly sacrificed this one.
(Oh, and RSA almost always has Satan in mind as the one being celebrated, where Jesus is the one to be desecrated).
4 - Al Barger
I pretty much have to second you on this one, Brian. Ritual religious abuse of any stripe is pretty rare in the US, but there are a lot more Christian fanatics than Satanists of any stripe to worry about.
For starters, I suppose by rights you'd have to include the Branch Davidian kids. They alone would be a far worse Christian children's death count than any possible made up Satanic abuses you could dream up.
5 - Brian Flemming
Just noticed this interesting article on repressed memory:
The diva of disclosure, memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus
(Via Wiley Wiggins)
6 - Mac Diva
Is Glenn Reynolds a fundamentalist Christian?
7 - bleudevil
When I saw this headline I thought you were going to comment on parents who withhold medical care - Jehovah's Witnesses, Church of the Firstborn, etc. I don't know that the people in Atlanta considered themselves Christian. Don't some other religions have exorcism rituals?
8 - Mac Diva
There must have been a folie-a-deux, which I find really scary. It means that people share and act on a delusion. Extreme cases would include the Branch Davidians and Jim Jones' cult. It is the utter extension of no one being available to say the emperor has no clothes or this makes no sense. It is a reason why groupthink gives me the willies.
9 - Brian Flemming
bleudevil,
Yes. As far as I know, no religion has a monopoly on wackiness or child abuse.
I would place the odds that an exorcism committed by a family in Atlanta, Georgia, is not done in the name of Jesus Christ pretty darn low, however. Less than 10%, I would say. Georgia isn't exactly crawling with radical Buddhists. At least, it wasn't the last time I was there.
If you follow the links in the entry above, you'll see that most U.S. exorcisms that end in the death of a child are in fact Christian rituals. There's really no getting around it.
(DISCLAIMER: The vast majority of Christians, including all of the many I personally know, are not totally bonkers and are pretty nice to their children. Except for telling them they might burn in Hell, but that's a lot better than actually setting them on fire, you have to admit. At one time, mainstream Christians did make a fetish of setting people on fire. So one could say that Christians have come a long way in the past several hundred years, and the rest of us should give them a big atta-boy for this progress.)
10 - frost
I think that the way this article was written is pretty unfair. Seriously Brian. You can't take an example of two mentally disturbed people and shine their sick light on Christianity as a whole. It's not only unfair, it's irresponsible.
When you paint with such a broad brush you're going to piss off a lot of innocent people.
Yes, the parents were sick, but seriously... do you think this is somehow represented by Christianity as a whole?
11 - Brian Flemming
Frost,
No, it does not represent Christianity as a whole (did you read my comment above?), but I think Christianity is protected from being associated with these things by the media--a courtesy they generally DON'T show for other religions.
An example to illustrate: Do you feel that those who worship Satan are unfairly smeared when the press uses the term "Satanic ritual abuse"? Have you ever defended Satanists against this kind of smear?
(For the purpose of this example, imagine that Satanic ritual abuse actually exists.)
12 - Eric Olsen
Brian, This is horrifying and a tragedy, but I really hope you aren't setting it up as some kind of indictment of Christianity. There are deranged loons of every religion, including no religion, out there. I wouldn't compare the relative danger of Christianity to Satanism, but to Islam - Allah is vastly more bloodthirsty than Yaweh.
13 - Brian Flemming
Historically or just recently?
14 - Mac Diva
Maybe insane people are very likely to grab on to religion as a vehicle because it is so available. The tendency is not limited to something this extreme, either. I don't know the percentage, but many people who are delusional believe odd things about God, or hear, see or talk to God. It is too bad we don't have a psychologist or psychiatrist blogger who could tell us more about this.
One of the eerie aspects of the attack on my blog I went through months ago was that the woman who began it, who is from a fundamentalist Christian background and has Asperger Syndrome, would send me bizarre emails filled with abusive comments wrapped in religion. 'You might be a better blogger than me, but you are going to Hell.' It is not a pleasant experience.
15 - Eric Olsen
All-time, and especially the last 50 years.
16 - Brian Flemming
Mac,
Like...that he exists? I don't know how a belief in God would not in and of itself constitute a delusion. Not necessarily dangerous, and not necessarily bad for society in any way at all, but clearly a delusion, I think. If belief in the existence of an entity for which there is no proof of existence is not a delusion, I'm not sure the word has much meaning. (Not saying you were saying otherwise; that phrase just got me thinking.)
Eric,
Historically, are you going by body count, or vividness of descriptions of slaughters, or something Pat Robertson said, or what?
In other words, do you have any solid evidence to back up that claim, or is it just a personal hunch?
17 - Mac Diva
Now, Eric, come on. You must know better than that. The Muslims did not shadow box during the Crusades. Nor did they 'settle' much of the world with the Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, destroying most of the people in those countries as they spread Christianity. Christianity is likely more blood-soaked than Islam. And, I am not saying that as a partisan since I'm not a religious person.
18 - Eric Olsen
Much evil has been done in the name of religion, I agree, and Christianity is far from innocent. But Islam did its share of subjugating and slaughtering when it had the upper hand. I will limit my statement to contemporary history, where Islam's culpability is pretty clear. I am talking about violence in the name of religion, not merely violence done by people who happen to adhere to a given religion.
All in all, it's just a personal guess - I should look into the real numbers, if that is possible.
19 - frost
brian: my main beef with your statement is that you assign certain mistakes (sin even) to Christianity rather than saying it was performed by evil men in the name of Christianity. That is like saying that Democracy in all forms is evil based on the fact that some stupid people have made really bad mistakes in the name of Democracy. That's bad logic.
Also... "If belief in the existence of an entity for which there is no proof of existence is not a delusion, I'm not sure the word has much meaning." well that's simply irrational. There are all sorts of proofs for the existance of God, but maybe not the exact thing you are looking for. No, God doesn't provide you with his zip code or SSN, but things like nature, our very existance as rational beings, and science in general (take the human eye for example) provide loads of proofs for the existance of a intelligent designer at a bare minimum.
20 - duane
"There are all sorts of proofs for the existance (sic) of God..."
No, there aren't.
"...but things like nature, our very existance (sic) as rational beings, and science in general (take the human eye for example) provide loads of proofs for the existance (sic) of a (sic) intelligent designer at a bare minimum."
No, they don't.
And there's no such thing as "bad logic."
21 - Mac Diva
Duane, have you been eating spinach today? You are making very assertive comments all over the place.
Frost, the conquistadors, as well as other invaders, did colonize much of the world in the name of Christianity. It was their official reason, not ancillary. So, I don't believe there is any way to separate slavery, colonialism and imperialism from Christianity, and all the people whose lives were blighted or lost, from it.
For the record, I am agnostic. But, I understand why people need to be religious. It gives them an anchor in a cold world and hope for something better after they die. But, though I have been through more than my share of suffering, it just never seemed that becoming religious was a way out for someone as given to poking at 'truths' as I am. I do admire many of the heroic Christians in history.
22 - duane
I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam. Toot-toot!
23 - Brian Flemming
So, because nature exists and also we are rational beings with complex eyes, clearly there is a God.
And not only that, but also this God clearly wants us to cut off the tips of our penises, acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth as His son and drink Jesus's blood every Sunday.
I think I get it.
24 - Eric Olsen
As presumably mature adults, I would think we would realize that mocking the deist beliefs of about half the world is rather pointless and unlikely to further dialogue.
There is no scientifically verifiable proof for the existence of God, and short of the Rapture, I'm not certain there will ever be. Nor is there scientific proof for the nonexistence of God: just because we can explain things by physical process doesn't mean that an entity didn't set up the process in the first place.
It's pretty simple: either you are a reductionist and if it can't be proved it doesn't exist, or you are willing to leave open the possibility that just because there is no "proof" in the scientific sense, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Mocking the faith of others will never be a fruitful move, will not convince anyone that they are wrong, and makes the mocker look like a cruel child. I have no idea why so many people feel compelled to attack faith with logic and vice versa - they are completely separate modes of operation.
And yes, Christianity has a very ugly and cruel history of forced conversion, which it seems to have generally grown out of over the last few hundred years - I hope that Islam can do the same - grow out of that mindset, that is.
25 - Brian Flemming
HOW TO GET OUT OF A CORNER
1. Set yourself up as the "adult" and the person who disagrees with you as a "child." (This makes you the authority!)
2. Imply that you are hurt by the "mocking" tone of a reductio ad absurdum argument, so that you don't have to answer it. (Sure, this infantilizes you a little bit and contradicts #1, but this ain't rocket science--it's religion!)
3. Belittle your opponent's argument as "reductionist" because he uses the same principles to determine if there is a god as he does to determine if it is raining outside.
You can't have it both ways, Eric. If you're going to admit that faith is illogical, you'll have to take what naturally comes from having a belief based on faith.
I could believe, for example, that I am the son of God, that all coins should be stamped with "Brian is Lord," that all of my commercial activities should be untaxed, that my ideas about sexual behavior should be adopted by all as rules, and that everyone who does not bow down and worship me should be pitied or, preferably, converted.
And you would be unable to "prove" that I am not the son of God. Just because I can't prove it doesn't mean it's not true.
Still, I'd expect to take what comes naturally from my unproven claims and my expectations of everyone else that arise from those claims. I wouldn't ask for special protection because my belief in my own divinity was deeply felt.