153 lines
9.5 KiB
Plaintext
153 lines
9.5 KiB
Plaintext
Pitchmen of the Satan Scare
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by Anson Shupe
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Published by the Wall Street Journal
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Friday, March 9, 1990
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Last Sunday Roman Catholics who attended services at St.
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Patrick's Cathedral in New York heard Cardinal John O'Connor
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lambasting heavy-metal rock music as "pornography in sound" that
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leads to spiritual entrapment and suicide among teenagers.
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Echoing a message dear to the hearts of Tipper Gore and her
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watchdog Parents Music Research Center, His Eminence called on
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the music industry to police itself more thoroughly.
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But Cardinal O'Connor went further. While not naming them, he
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linked rock groups like Judas Priest and Black Sabbath to
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cemetery desecrations, perverse sex, and demonic possession. His
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sermon even included readings from "The Exorcist." He claimed
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William Peter Blatty's best-selling novel was "gruesomely
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realistic."
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Unfortunately, the cardinal's sermon only added more hype to
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what has become a form of cultural hysteria in America. That
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hysteria is Satanism or, more accurately, a preoccupation with
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worrying about satanic influences in our music, our movies, our
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families, even in our high schools.
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From the occasional teen-age dabblers to purported
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conspiratorial rings of devil-worshippers in high places,
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Satanists are credited with promoting drug abuse, snatching kids
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off the street, organizing child pornography rings, breeding
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infants for ritualistic sacrifice and cannibalism, and mutilating
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cattle in the countryside. Groups such as the Cult Awareness
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Network, which formerly stuck to making life difficult for such
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unconventional religions as Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church
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and the Hare Krishnas, have now sounded the Satanist alarm in
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earnest.
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A Growth Industry
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Satanism-exposure-mania has become a growth industry in this
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country, as Arthur Lyons reveals in evenhanded but blunt terms in
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his 1988 book "Satan Wants You." The Satanic theme is profitable
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not just as a gimmick for rock bands and titillating Hollywood
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horror movies, nor simply for publishers, both secular and
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Christian, who churn out potboiler accounts of mass murders and
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disturbed young would-be Charles Mansons. It also is profitable
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for a growing cadre of self-proclaimed "experts" who are
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canvassing North America offering seminars to police departments,
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clergy, social workers, nurses and educators.
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Commanding between $500 and $1,000 (plus expenses) an
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appearance, these speakers purport to reveal the rituals,
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implements, beliefs, symbols and secret codes used by Satan's
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occult underground. Under the rubric of Satanism they draw
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connections among violence, mind control, sexual orgies, drugs,
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the lyrics of rock music, and even the fantasy game Dungeons and
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Dragons.
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The content of most of these seminars is pure rubbish from any
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kind of informed scholarly standpoint. Aside from
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unsubstantiated claims and sweeping generalizations, what is
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presented is a naive mish-mash of occult and mystical traditions
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confused with shamanism and the theatrical antics of such
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performers as rocker Ozzy Osbourne.
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Relatively benign and openly operating groups such as Anton
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LeVey's Church of Satan and Michael A. Aquino's Temple of Set
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(which offer syntheses of philosophy, unexceptional fraternal-
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organization gibberish, and exotic costumes for initiates, while
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never really acknowledging a personal devil figure such as
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Lucifer) are thrown together with the bloody drug-cult murders in
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Matamoros, Mexico, as examples of the imminent danger among us.
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It would all be laughable if serious, well-intentioned persons
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were not taking this Satanic threat at face value.
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Economics fuels the spread of the fear of Satanism beyond the
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popular culture of rock music and horror movies to professional
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audiences. Many middle-level educators, health and social-
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service workers, and law-enforcement officials across the country
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are required to attend a number of educational workshops each
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year to keep or upgrade their certifications or to be eligible
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for raises and promotions. Just as ex-Satanists have seemingly
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come out of the woodwork in recent years to give their gripping
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testimonies, so also the entrepreneurial experts of Satanism have
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emerged. Now they are offering workshops to enlighten service
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providers. As a result, Satanism has emerged as one of the most
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popular offerings in such continuing education. The lurid
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content of the presentations sure beats the generally dry fare
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otherwise provided at such conferences.
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How much money is involved? Likely no one is getting filthy
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rich, and mere millions, not billions, are involved on a national
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scale. But the fees typically come out of local taxpayers'
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pockets. Moreover, these new entrepreneurs have now spread the
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gospel of Satan-fear through all 50 states and in most large
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urban areas. Recently, according to J. Gordon Melton, director
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of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa
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Barbara, Calif., and the nation's premier authority on _real_
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Satanic cults, these speakers have taken their workshops to such
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middle-size communities as Sioux City, Iowa; Sioux Falls, S.D.;
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and, in my Indiana backyard, the cities of Fort Wayne and
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Evansville.
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Such workshops are rarely publicized and are closely limited to
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specific audiences of professionals. One reason often given is
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that Satanists would try to find some way to disrupt the
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proceedings if they knew about them in advance. However,
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probably the better reason is the sad quality of their
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"information." Says Mr. Melton, "If what was being taught in
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these 'limited seminars' were revealed and became fair game for
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public discourse, the ridiculousness of it would be evident."
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But minus such open inspection, an entire generation of genuinely
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concerned professionals is being exposed, under the guise of
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technical training, to downright misleading, false and poorly
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assembled information.
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Ironically, this entrepreneurial expansion comes at a time when
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the Satanist hysteria may actually be losing some power.
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Cardinal O'Connor himself admitted Sunday that there were only
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two exorcisms in the entire New York archdiocese last year--not
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much of a body count for active Satanists or their opponents.
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And recently Harvest House Publishers, a Christian press, decided
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to cease publication of "Satan's Underground," a successful
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"autobiographical" best seller by Lauren Stratford, who claimed
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that as a Satanist she had deliberately bred three children for
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sacrifice. It seems reporters for the evangelical Christian
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magazine Cornerstone tracked down ambiguities and inconsistencies
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in her account and discovered that Ms. Stratford had made up the
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whole thing (which she later admitted).
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Likewise, some professionals who have been the largest audience
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for Satanism hysteria have become angry. Robert Hicks, a
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criminal justice as become vocally critical of the sloppy content
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of workshops supposedly informing his law enforcement colleagues
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about Beelzebub's current activities. Much of it, Mr. Hicks
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maintains, is based on sensational newspaper articles,
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undocumented secondary sources, or unsubstantiated claims.
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Skeptical Officers
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Police never find the tangible evidence to back up ex-
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Satanists' claims, such as one commonly repeated claim that about
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50,000 human sacrifices are perpetrated each year in this
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country. The absence of _any_ traces of such activity has begun
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to cause some reflective police, at least, to question if they
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have been conned. As a result, skeptical law-enforcement
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officers in Virginia are now boycotting workshops that offer
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Satanic conspiracies as a tempting way to "clear" the unsolved
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crimes on their blotters.
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Cardinal O'Connor cannot be blamed for being concerned about
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the hedonism, the decline in aesthetics, and the decay of
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civility in modern American society. But seeking its cause in a
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demonic influence loose among rock lyrics--just as professionals
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are now being told to seek the roots of abuse and maladjustment
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they see in their clients and patients in Satanic cult abuse--is
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to retreat to medieval thinking. History shows that human beings
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are perfectly capable of acting in evil, destructive ways without
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infernal help.
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----
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Mr. Shupe is a professor of sociology at Indiana-Purdue
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University at Fort Wayne and is preparing a book on cult and
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Satanic phenomena in the U.S.
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