Brian Baxter *
December 2003

 

Fundamentalist Protestants and traditionalist Catholics profess to hate what they term ‘the occult’. They devote much time and energy to attacking its manifestations including Satan worship, New Age flummery, ‘back-masking’ in rock music and even poor old Harry Potter.

But, if the dictionary definition of the word is anything to go by, Christians of this kind are themselves deeply ensnared in the ’supernatural, mystical, magical’ world of the occult. They live in a world of gods and devils, angels and demons, after-lives, faith-healing, invocations and miraculous appearances; and their rejection of other occultic forms and practices seems to be a hatred of the ‘almost the same’. (Berman, 1994, per Cuneo, 1999)

It seems trite but it needs to be said from time to time: ultraconservative Christians have no more right to claim an intimate acquaintance with the supernatural than you, I, a Siberian shaman, Sun Myung Moon or the most transparent fairground trickster. To any who object that ‘the life and work of Jesus are historically-attested events’ or similar, all I can say is that you’re about 150 years behind on your reading.

What these Christians believe in is magic, pure and simple.

Catholic magic

Casting around for reasons to explain the appeal of Catholic traditionalism in America, Michael Cuneo attributes partial responsibility to ‘the allure of magical certitude’:

For generations prior to [the Second Vatican Council], much that counted as popular devotionalism in the Catholic world carried the strong imprint of magic. Holy pictures and statues; votive candles, relics and medals: all of these objects were thought to possess a supernatural efficacy or potency. If approached properly, with the right piety and incantations and so forth, they could (presumably) assist in bringing about a miraculous healing or some other tangible benefit.

As Catholicism in the United States and Canada became more modernised and more rationalised in the years following the council … the magical dimension of popular devotionalism was gradually suppressed. And for many people, this was undoubtedly experienced as a great loss. (Cuneo, 1999, 150)

The response of a large group of Catholics was to support so-called Marianist seers, who claimed to receive visions and instructions directly from the Virgin Mary herself. One of these, Veronica Lueken (d. 1995), would examine photos you had taken during one of her visions, point to a light splotch, a dark splotch, or practically any splotch and interpret its meaning for you. Perhaps the best piece of advice Veronica received from the Virgin was to collect adequate funds from her followers. By the late 1970s,

… [i]n addition to the Virgin Mary, Jesus and St Michael and several other heavenly beings had also started making frequent appearances to her … [W]orkers were forced to rig up a system of lighting so that pilgrims could keep track of the incoming celestial traffic. A flashing blue light signalled that the Virgin Mary was on the grounds, and a flashing red one signalled the arrival of Jesus. [ibid, 163]

I defy anyone to make a logical distinction between this sort of thing and a primitive magical invocation ceremony. You have your priest or priestess; your god, or close approximation thereto, depending on which coloured light is flashing; and your miraculous utterance or divination. It’s magic!

Protestant magic

Australia’s own Rev. Fred Nile talks to God. And God talks right back to him. Even tells him riddles sometimes. In fact, it’s owing to one of these little colloquies that Nile took the helm of the Festival of Light back in the early 1970s.

According to Fred Nile: An Autobiography (2001), a woman told him one day that she had had a dream about him. For all their rejection of Freudian ideas, fundamentalists and their kin are very interested in the content and meaning of dreams and ‘visions’, doubtless recalling certain biblical occurrences. In this case, the woman told Nile that she had seen him receiving an important invitation from God and that Fred ‘must accept it, because it’s God’s will for your life’. Fred discussed the dream with his wife Elaine and a few days later received an invitation to lead the Festival of Light.

Fred prayed and before you could say ‘Abracadabra’,

… God showed me a modern parable. God was standing in front of a great barrel filled with the names of many prominent Christians. One by one God picked out a name on a piece of paper and asked the person, ‘Will you do it?’ But each one had an excuse … Eventually the barrel was empty and God looked with disappointment. Then He noticed, caught in the bottom, a small piece of paper with a name printed on it. God looked at the name and then said, ‘Well, it looks like I’m stuck with Fred Nile!’

Putting to one side the self-serving nature of this ‘modern parable’, it’s impossible to miss the strong magical content inherent in Nile’s approach to most issues. Like others of his kind, he enjoys ‘putting God to the test’:

I was like Gideon, who put a fleece out three times to make certain the Lord was with him … I prayed for the Lord to confirm that it was His will for me to serve Him through [NSW State] Parliament by three clear signs.

Naturally, Fred received the three signs in short order (one was merely the discovery that he was not the first ordained minister to serve in Parliament). To me it looks more like sheer superstition garnished with numerology, but try telling him that.

In other parts of his autobiography, Nile wonders whether two men he happened to meet were really angels, whether lesbians in the Sydney Mardi Gras parade are possessed by demons, and he thanks God for placing the Southern Cross in the sky above Australia ’so the shadow of the cross of Jesus Christ falls across our land’. I opened a copy of his Family World News the other day and found myself reading about a boy who had cast a spell on his younger brother, making him forget how to walk.

Fred would have been very much at home in most of the civilisations of yesteryear and in many that exist today. A good dose of unrelieved mysticism spread the length and breadth of society was really all he needed to keep him happy. What a pity for both him and us that he fetched up in modern-day Australia.

Creationist magic

C’mon guys, these people believe in dragons. No, they don’t just think that primitive folk dug up some dinosaur bones and said, ‘Aar, these be dragons’. Many creationists believe in actual fire-breathing dragons - indeed, all Bible literalists must believe that such a creature once existed (see Job 41, esp. 19-21). As Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis (AiG) tells us:

Leviathan … seems also to have been some form of fire-breathing dragon. For those who wonder about this, remember that the living Bombardier beetle can shoot out super-heated gases in its own defence. So therefore why not Leviathan?

We could discuss many magical creationist beliefs here. We could talk about things like the streets of heaven being paved with gold, or the creation of earth preceding the creation of the sun and stars, or Cyclone Tracy as God’s vengeance on blasphemously-named Darwin. Were you aware that carnivores such as lions, crocodiles and piranha were formerly vegetarians, a theory that gave rise to one of my all-time favourite creationist quotes - ‘[L]ions were created to eat plants - they have chosen to attack people.’ That’s all we need - immoral lions!

But then Adam had to go and eat the apple. John Mackay of Creation Research assures us that in his pre-Fall state, Adam was evidently immune to disease, poison, and best of all, to alcohol. He’d have enjoyed some of the company at a Skeptics’ Annual Dinner.

But the superlative piece of creationist magic is their invention of the ‘Biblically impossible’ category. This is one of the best ’stoppers’ I’ve ever seen: ‘your argument cannot succeed as it contradicts my reading of the Bible’. Jonathan Sarfati uses it quite a bit, and it must be right because he’s a chess champion, as AiG never tires of telling us. Some people might think the argument loses a bit of gloss as Gerardus Bouw also pushes it when promoting his idea that the sun revolves around the earth (’The only reason I’m a geocentrist is because the Scripture demands it’), but then you can’t have everything.

Creationists freely admit that their version of Christianity is ‘a religion of miracle’ ie that they systematically attribute many extraordinary events to a supernatural agency. So if they agree that their approach to life, the universe and things in general is essentially magical, why bother straining for pseudo-naturalistic explanations?

The magic often breaks through at unexpected times, as when Carl Wieland of AiG was once asked why human fossils were never found mixed up in the same rock layers as dinosaurs. Carl hypothesised that since God intended to destroy mankind at the time of Noah’s Flood he may have deliberately removed all traces of our existence. In other words, God miraculously removed all human skeletal remains from rock strata rich in the remains of other creatures. Some vanishing act!

I once read an article in an evangelical magazine advising Christians not to ascribe everything good that happened in their lives to the miraculous powers of the Almighty, ‘including events like finding parking spots’. A querulous fundamentalist immediately retorted that he thanked God every day for finding him miraculous parking spots, including some right outside city buildings.

Some might feel that this is devaluing the currency just a shade, but the point here is that ultraconservative Christians who form the support base of creationist groups like the idea of miracles. They really don’t need to be jollied along by the idea that creationism is scientifically, as well as biblically accurate. Creationist Brenton Minge of Queensland put it well, when he wrote:

Just as Christ’s turning of water into wine at Cana, and His stilling of the storm on Tiberias … overruled the laws of fermentation and meteorology, so no hydrological model can do justice to the action of God in the Flood. An economy of miracles is one thing, but their complete absence is quite another, and surely unacceptable to a creationist mind committed, a priori, to the involvement of God in history.

That’s fine, Brenton, but why even bother to economise on allowable miracles in explaining creation? If you’re going to permit one magical step, why not a thousand?

Magic vs Magic

So what’s a poor fundamentalist to do in this naughty, spirit-ridden world? The Evil One is perpetually hurling his fiery darts at you and yours, and you blunder along in fear and trembling towards an uncertain salvation.

According to the Oz Challenge ministry, what you do is this. Get down on your knees and pray something like the following:

Lord, I find myself under horrific spiritual attack and therefore desire to put on the Armour of God. I tightly place around my waist the Belt of Truth. I place over my breast the Breastplate of Your Righteousness because my own righteousness is as filthy rags. I place on my head the Helmet of Salvation and now bind all spirits that would try to destroy my mind …

(Warning: you may have left this too late.)

… Spirits of mind control, anti-Christ, death and hell, condemnation, oppression, depression, shame, guilt, unbelief, confusion and mental anguish - I bind all these spirits in Jesus’ name. I take the Sword of the Spirit and now would seek to cut off from me all demonic spirits and activities from my life, all watcher and listener spirits, blockers, scramblers, principalities and powers, all rulers in high places and all strongholds.

Now conclude the prayer with a flourish:

I cut and negate all curses that have come through prayers, spells, chants, hexes, incantations, words spoken against me and my family through witchcraft, New Age, Satanism, voodoo and astral channels. I command all demons and spirits to leave me at once and to go to the pit. I grind all cords attached to us into dust and throw them into the pit, in Jesus’ name.

Repeat this prayer once daily, or more often if the blockers and scramblers are having a real dip.

Conclusion

Or you could always try donning the Underpants of Repulsion. Works for me.

References

AiG Creation Ex Nihilo and variant titles, various issues
AiG Technical Journal, various issues
Berman, Paul (1994) ‘The Other and the Almost the Same’, New Yorker (Feb. 28), 61-71
Creation Research, Creation News, various issues
Cuneo, Michael W. (1999) The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism (Johns Hopkins U P)
Family World News (1997), June, 10-11
Nile, Fred (2001) Fred Nile: An Autobiography (Strand Publishing)
Parle, Andrew (1994) ‘A Day with the Creationists’, The Skeptic, v.14, no.3, Spring, 42
Salt Shakers Journal (2003), April, 15-16

(This article was originally published in The Skeptic Summer 2003 (Vol. 23, No. 4).
Republished with permission.)