Reading Time: 2 minutes Update: The CBC has more information on the camp and none of it makes the Christians running it look good. The person who performed the exorcism was a self-described “apostle” Carlos Doerksen. One mother whose child witnessed the exorcism says “her 14-year-old son is now in counselling.” Another says the other Christian leaders defended the […]
Exorcism
Posted inLaw
Former students allege “violent” abuse at Saskatoon Christian school
Reading Time: 3 minutes A Christian school in Saskatoon, Canada was a hub of physical and emotional abuse for several years, according to 18 former students. Several of them recently shared their stories with the CBC, arguing that, no matter what happens legally, the government needs to stop giving subsidies and tax breaks to the private religious school. All […]
Posted inReligious News
A shared delusion led to an ‘exorcism’ that killed a 3-year-old girl
Reading Time: 3 minutes You may have seen the headlines: A 3-year-old girl was killed in an “exorcism.” The actual story is so much worse than that, though. At the risk of depressing you, I think there’s value in talking about what happened to her because it says a lot about the power of religion to override any kind […]
Posted inGeneral
Context is Everything in Spookiness (LSP #216)
Reading Time: 5 minutes We humans are extremely context-sensitive creatures, and when something runs out of context, it can be a spooky experience for us.
Posted inReligion
Spiritual Warfare: Translating the Christianese (LSP #163)
Reading Time: 9 minutes With their grandiose language, spiritual warriors certainly sound impressive. Ah, but if you lift the hood of this Jesus-built hot rod, you’ll find nothing more under it than a pokey little jalopy engine. Today, Lord Snow Presides over the utter banality that spiritual warriors mask with over-the-top Christianese.
Posted inGeneral
Bobby Corsi’s Exorcism Fits and Creates A Pattern (LSP #147, Ch. 26)
Reading Time: 8 minutes In this installment, we briefly consider how the exorcism of Bobby Corsi perfectly fits the pattern that evangelicals confirmed and expanded during the Satanic Panic. Today, Lord Snow Presides over the strange way that evangelicals’ art confirms their beliefs — and also extends it outward.
Posted inReligion
The VelociPastor: 1.21 Gigawatt Review!
Reading Time: 20 minutes HI and welcome back! Last post, I put up the pre-movie chatter post. Today, let’s have the full review! I loved it. And amazingly, it actually turned out to be incredibly relevant to our interests. The VelociPastor is, simply put, the most amazing bad movie I’ve ever seen. It’s a labor of love with a serious story […]
Posted inGeneral
The Exorcism of the Man in Black (LSP #145, TPD Ch. 25)
Reading Time: 9 minutes Hi and welcome back! We return now to our longform examination of Frank Peretti’s literary hairball, his 1986 fantasy novel This Present Darkness (TPD). In this installment, Bernice’s attacker has his very own Gerasene Demoniac moment, ending with a(nother) dramatic exorcism. Today, Lord Snow Presides over a millennia-old story retold again. (Please click here to find the […]
Posted inReligion
A Wingnut Meeting Gets Completely Out of Hand in ‘This Present Darkness’ (LSP #138, Ch. 21)
Reading Time: 10 minutes In Chapter 21, Frank Peretti skipped merrily across a whole bunch of plots, giving us a little taste of each one, George R. R. Martin style. I only touched on each of those plot vignettes last week. So now, let’s zero in on one of the most interesting of the lot of them. Today, Lord Snow Presides over just how easy it is for wingnuts’ meetings to get completely out of hand.
Posted inGeneral
An Exorcism in Christian Fantasy-Land in ‘This Present Darkness’ (LSP #128, Ch. 15)
Reading Time: 11 minutes In this installment, a TRUE CHRISTIAN™ wages honest-to-goodness spiritual warfare–and he wins, because of course he does, because this is a cringe-inducing Christian fantasy based around the idea of Jesus Power being a real thing that actually really exists and actually really does stuff in the real world. Today, Lord Snow Presides over an imaginary battle for imaginary stakes that today’s fundagelicals still think is all in deadly earnest.