May 27, 2025 • 64 mins
Summary
In this episode, the hosts delve into the complex world of cults, focusing on the Satanic Panic and the influence of charismatic leaders like Franklin Jones. They explore the historical context of cults, the role of fear and control, and the lasting impact of cult experiences on individuals. Through personal stories and reflections, the conversation highlights the intricate dynamics of cults and their cultural significance. In this conversation, the participants explore the complexities of growing up in cult-like environments, the challenges of healing from trauma, and the nuances of personal identity shaped by these experiences. They discuss the importance of critical reflection on spiritual beliefs, the impact of family dynamics, and the struggle against misinformation and polarization in society. The dialogue emphasizes the need for understanding and compassion in navigating these difficult topics, while also recognizing the value of storytelling and fiction in processing and sharing their journeys.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:25):
Welcome to Cults and the Culting of America podcast.
My name is Scott Lloyd.
I am joined by knitting cult lady, Daniela Mesteneck Young.
Daniela, it's good to see you.
Good to see you too.
It's been a minute since we've had the opportunity to be on together, but I'm reallythrilled and excited about tonight's uh episode because a long time friend of mine, uh Dr.
(00:50):
Scott Culpepper is joining us.
Scott, it's so good to see you.
Great to see you too, Scott.
Good to be with you and Daniela.
Absolutely.
And Scott Culpepper and I go way back here.
were doing podcasts before anyone was listening.
uh thanks to Daniela now, people are actually listening to what we have to say, Scott.
(01:14):
So this is going to be a oh great show.
fantastic.
Thank you so much for the invitation.
Yeah.
So, um, so the last time we were together, you were a history professor at the sameinstitution that where I was a communications professor.
think that was the last time we were together in person.
Uh, but, uh, just for, for my sake and for everyone listening, what have you been up tolately?
(01:39):
Yeah, I left Louisiana in 2012 and I've been in Northwest Iowa for almost 13 years now,which is so hard to believe.
A lot of life happens in 13 years.
I've been teaching history here at a small Christian university in Northwest Iowa.
I get to teach like early modern European history, Renaissance Reformation, class of witchtrials, Latin American history.
(02:02):
And then I also get to teach religion and American culture.
So it's great.
I have the best of both worlds.
I can do the Atlantic world European thing.
And then I can still incorporate my training in religious studies and theology as well.
So it's a lot of fun.
It's been a great experience.
I've got fantastic students.
uh In the intervening years, I've started doing some research on the satanic panic, whichis part of what we'll talk about today.
(02:26):
Some of it's stemming from my experiences in Louisiana and earlier in high school and allof that, and just sort of feeding into my academic studies.
This last year, I published a fiction book in the fall.
which stems from that research I'm doing for a nonfiction book that I'll publish down theroad soon.
So that's been my current research interest and work.
(02:48):
And aside from that, grading papers, teaching great students and trying to keep my headabove water.
I love it, I love it.
writing books is hard.
So I definitely hope we get to hear more about your book.
um The Satanic Panic.
This is a hard one for people because anytime you bring up that this was not real, peoplego straight to how could you not believe victims?
(03:14):
Can you kind of like...
give us a little orientation to the satanic panic and what it was and how it ties intolike religious studies.
Absolutely.
It's so amazing how few people still know much about the Satanic panic.
There are times when I'm talking to people like you who've had some experience with it andyou think, surely everyone must know because we experienced it so deeply.
(03:38):
But in many ways, it's one of the biggest out of the open public things that so manypeople still don't know anything about.
And my students and my classes are just completely unaware.
I'll bring up the prohibitions against Dungeons and Dragons.
Today, you know, I teach on a Christian college campus.
play Dungeons and Dragons as part of the gaming guild there.
They think absolutely nothing of it.
(03:59):
So they're shocked at the panic, the hysteria over the game of the eighties.
Basically it was this moment in American history and culture from roughly about the mid1960s to about the mid 1990s when you had a confluence of cultural forces coming together,
changes in mainstream culture, concerns about
(04:20):
harmful practices and activities, and a lot of popular culture creations that focused onthe occult that sort of coalesced together to create this societal panic where you had
people not just in the places you would expect, places like conservative churches ordenominations that were really in the spiritual warfare theology, but outside of those
(04:41):
circles as well, law enforcement, psychologists, social workers, uh people concerned thatthere were actual
cult members throughout the country focused intently on damaging young people and seekingto corrupt the culture.
It was amazing how far it branched out into the various circles of society, far beyond theareas where those things usually percolate.
(05:07):
And to some degree, it's very much a phenomenon of the late 20th century, at least theparticulars of it.
But in other ways, it's also a tale as old as time.
You go back to the witch trials of the early modern period and some of the same sorts ofthrough lines are there.
The same sorts of cultural tendencies, they seem like they recycle.
I had a friend at one point that said that history doesn't necessarily repeat, but it doesrhyme very often.
(05:31):
And there is a rhythmic sense to a lot of this too.
You get cycles of this kind of thing.
And what was so interesting about the satanic panic in the late 20th century, we allassume that we were so enlightened that such things could happen.
in that place, in that time.
And of course, we discovered very quickly that that enchantment of the universe of realityhasn't gone away.
(05:53):
It might go into hibernation sometimes, but people are still afraid of what goes bump ofthe night.
They're still concerned that there are mystical powers out there.
And one of the things that I've been really drawn to in my study, The Satanic Panic, isthe sense in which so much of it was like a proxy war, sort of a
a strategy of distraction in many ways, because you had people mobilized to fight thesecultural enemies or perceive cultural enemies fueled by satanic power, they believed,
(06:25):
while ignoring other very real societal issues that were going on right in front of them.
But those were hard to deal with.
They were complicated.
They required deep thinking.
It was much easier to mobilize against these perceived cultural threats.
And what's interesting about this, we lived through this, Scott, in such a profound waybecause I remember in the churches that I was involved with, the institutions of higher
(06:54):
education, this was something that was accepted among so many people without an ounce ofevidence.
It was like, where is the evidence that all of this is taking place?
And I laugh at the lunacy of it, but it had very real world implications, very profoundimplications, negative implications for a lot of people.
(07:18):
think about the story of the West Memphis Three, and that was a close proximity to where Igrew up in Northeast Arkansas.
And I remember back in the 90s, these three young men uh were assumed to be guilty becausethey were a little bit out of the mainstream.
when it came to their practice of religion or the way that they behaved, the way that theyacted.
(07:43):
And so when these heinous murders took place, it was just assumed, well, you know, thishad to be a satanic cult.
And these three young men, their lives were devastated for many, many years until theywere recently released.
Yeah, it was horrific.
And their story is so powerful.
Damien Echols tells that story often on podcasts and it is just moving and heartbreaking.
(08:09):
And one of the things that was so crazy about that episode is it's the early nineties.
There has been an office of the FBI, like you said, investigating this intensively,looking for the evidence that most people are not even caring to be concerned with.
And they're reaching their conclusions by the early nineties that there's nothing there.
The FBI is publishing a special report in 1993 and 94, which states, we have found noevidence of satanic cult activity.
(08:36):
And yet the persistence of these myths, those three boys are being railroaded at just thattime.
You know, it has interesting echoes to me of kind of what's going on right now with thisalmost like, I call it fantasizing about the apocalypse or apocalypticizing, you know, and
you talked about this being like a proxy war.
(08:58):
And I think, you know, a lot of what fueled this into the 80s and 90s was people gettingon the internet and people understanding like the depths to which
children were being abused.
People, you know, we were learning about the Catholic church, right?
Like people are learning that the people in their families and their churches and theirreligions are the ones abusing the children.
(09:24):
And they don't want to have that discussion.
So they go on this imaginary war path about satanic rituals.
And, you know, I've noticed this even on the left with liberals in the social justicearena.
that so many of us have left religious extremism.
(09:44):
But I don't think we've deconstructed the like, rapture and the panic and the, you know, Ihave people like asking me like, what are we gonna do in the revolution?
But they're not comfortable enough to have a conversation with their dad or theirfather-in-law or like the person in their life that is actually voting for this stuff that
(10:06):
they think is ending the world.
Yeah, it's so true.
Christianity Today has been doing a podcast called The Devil in the Deep Blue Sea.
And I like the way they have structured that because they've compared the response toDamien Echols and the West Memphis Three to the way that the church dealt with the
revelations about the Duggars and the difference.
(10:27):
Like these guys, the West Memphis Three, they weren't actually guilty of this crime, butthey were not given the benefit of the doubt.
The Duggars...
given the benefit of the doubt to the nth degree because they look like us.
They sound like us.
They fit the evangelical mold.
But of course, those who don't fit the mold, they're suspect.
They're problematic.
(10:47):
They could be bearers of evil and darkness.
And that's what it's always been, right?
The witch hunts have always been some form of you're not like us, right?
Like you're a woman who is living on the edge of town, surviving on her own, like almostlike showing the lie to, right?
(11:10):
Like the cult tells you the small town is like, you have to live this way, right?
You have to live this way under our rules if you want to be valid.
and the people living on the fringes are showing kind of like the lie to these socialrules and social norms.
And I think in some ways we just can't tolerate that.
Absolutely.
It can't turn out well for them because if it turns out well for them, then maybe that's acritique of the way that we have been living.
(11:35):
There's not that sense that there's room for acceptable differences.
Pluralism, know, acceptable pluralism for all of us that we can all thrive and stillpursue different paths.
That's one way I feel like evangelical Christianity sometimes really shoots itself in thefoot because they work so hard in youth group context to make you afraid of the world.
(11:57):
and those in the world.
And the portrayal they give you of those who are not committed to Christ is they'remiserable people, they're awful people, they're immoral sort of people, and you leave that
context and you actually encounter these people.
Not only do you often discover that they're great people, they're often better people thanthe people that you've been encountering in youth group or in church circles.
(12:19):
uh Their morality is sometimes deeper and purer and more consistent.
And so creating those straw men, which the satanic panic, witch hunts, all the kind ofmoral panics throughout the history of the world do is just destructive to Christianity.
In the end, it hurts the trust that people have in the church when they will give theseinaccurate pictures of other people.
(12:47):
And when people start to discover the reality, they'll start asking the question, well, ifthey were wrong about this, what else are they wrong about?
And the abuse crisis is of course such a huge part of all of this because a lot of theconcerns, the hysteria that fed into the early years of the satanic panic involved
concerns about satanic ritual abuse, rumors about abuse happening in daycares, mostinfamously in the McMartin preschool case beginning in 1983 and going on until the very
(13:17):
early nineties.
There were allegations that daycare workers were taking kids to secret tunnels below thedaycare.
engaging in satanic rituals, flying around the room and just all kinds of things.
You could look at the interviews that some social workers conducted with the kids at thedaycare.
You can follow the pattern of the interviews and you could see where the interviewers areplanting suggestions, which the kids are eventually going to take up because just like
(13:45):
previously in the witch trials where they would question someone for days until finallythey were like, okay, I'll say whatever you want me to say.
Just stop this, let me sleep, let me eat.
These kids are being questioned by these adults and they decide, you know, they'reaccustomed to asking, okay, what do I have to do to make these adults happy?
And so eventually they'll start parroting back the suggestions the adults are making untilthese huge castles are built in the air.
(14:11):
There's a picture of the McMartin grounds where concerned parrot showed up.
and dug up the grounds.
It looks like dig, dug, you know, in the yard.
They're like these trenches that parents have dug.
It's an imagined space.
There is no basement below the school.
And a lot of people have talked about how maybe part of that was influenced by thefeelings that people had as more kids were going to daycare, more women are joining the
(14:38):
workforce.
There are some anxieties about how their kids maybe are being cared for during the day.
You've got
books like Michelle Remembers coming out where Michelle Smith, interviewed by hercounselor, later husband, Lawrence Pasdar, says that she recalls memories of abuse and it
just begins to mushroom.
And like you said, you get this visceral fear that they are menacing people out to harmour children while there is an epidemic of abuse in both Roman Catholic Church and
(15:09):
evangelical churches.
And like you said, as the statistics start to pile up, it becomes more evident that whereabuse is happening, it's usually happening within families perpetrated by someone who is
known to the family, maybe even a family member.
Yeah.
You know, it's I want to say it's interesting this programming of the fear.
(15:32):
You know, it makes me think of so I'm an organizational psychologist.
so we study Adam Smith.
Hate that guy who, you know, originally theorizes that like 80 percent of humanity isshiftless and awful.
And we'll just try to get away with everything.
Right.
And 20 percent.
(15:53):
are the ones that want the world to like function and be in place and work.
And like, he should just stay to finances, right?
Because obviously, turns out it's actually the opposite.
And now we have empirical science and we know that like 80 % of society wants the world towork nicely.
(16:13):
And you know, it's interesting in security policy now, you're setting your policies forthose 20 % of people, right?
You're slowing down the 80%.
to catch the 20 % that are actually doing the thing.
And I kind of feel like when you were talking, I was just thinking of that.
And like when you get out of a cult or when you get out of these cults of churchianity, Icall it, that has inculcated this fear into you and told you like the whole world is bad.
(16:42):
And it's almost like flipping that.
percentage, right?
It's like, yes, there are bad people out there that are gonna do horrible things to you,but the majority of people you're gonna meet are gonna be nice and accepting and like it's
not what we've been told or taught to think.
Absolutely.
There's so many people who've gone through the process that some people calldeconstruction, where they first of all had to learn to trust the world and not be afraid
(17:07):
of the unknown out there.
And then having gone through that process, they have to relearn if they're inclined to howto trust the church again, because some of the paradigms they were given were inaccurate.
They were distracting or even fear producing, and they have to go back and decide, youknow, how do I
Be critical again and be a person of faith and combine those things.
(17:30):
And that's no easy thing.
That's a big part of what the fiction book that I wrote deals with is the idea of thesegirls who are raised in an environment like that on steroids, like a supercharged, uh ever
present spiritual warfare environment.
What would you carry forward into adulthood?
What kind of scars would you wrestle with throughout your life?
(17:51):
What would you do if you had to go back and confront it?
Those are the kinds of things I really enjoy dealing with.
in writing that.
Scott, it strikes me oh that you and I were raised in an environment in church cultureswhere Satan was a convenient foe.
He was a uh frequent foil, if you will, especially oh if there was something that wasgoing on in the church or something in the leadership's life that needed a convenient
(18:21):
distraction, right?
Don't look at all the bad things that are happening over here.
Look at what Satan is attempting to do in the world.
And we'd all get excited and caught up with that.
I want you to talk a little bit about the history of this, even going back, you mentionedthe witch trials and things of that nature.
But before you do, Daniela, I'm curious um in the children of God, what did the role ofSatan look like?
(18:49):
Was he something that...
you guys heard about often, what did that look like in your context?
Yes, I mean, the children of God was sort of pretending to be Christian, right, or basedin Christian theology.
So we had Satan.
But I would say much, much more, we had the United States.
The United States was who he had decided was our bad guy.
(19:13):
And so was, you know, America, Babylon, the whore.
um And turns out, as I would go to figure out as an adult, like a big part of that was toget his people living abroad.
because it's much harder to leave your cult when you're also being geographically abusedand you're in other parts of the world.
(19:33):
um So yeah, we definitely had Satan and being used for whatever and everything was thedevil, especially if you had any sort of feelings, right?
It was the devil.
um But the sort of big bad guy out there that was gonna get us, that was gonna end theworld was always.
(19:54):
United States.
Uncle Sam.
that's interesting.
Well, uh Scott, going back throughout history, has this uh sort of satanic panic, itshowed up frequently in our history as a nation, I would think.
It has.
And not only that, but different manifestations of similar things as well.
(20:15):
If you look at the medieval period, for a long time, you had folk magic sort of coexistingwith the robust Christian theology.
And part of the reason for that is because as they converted Germanic tribes after thefall of the Roman Empire, they had a lot of those folk practices, and sometimes the church
challenged those, but sometimes they just sort of let them be.
They felt like it was more...
(20:36):
more negative, more problematic to challenge those and just to let them grow.
You kind of got to change towards the end of the medieval period, 15th century or so,there begins to be an attachment with folk practices with sort of a theology of demonism
and ideas about Satan making pacts with people.
And at that point, you really get the heyday of witch hunting from the late 15th centuryuntil about the early 1800s or so.
(21:02):
In the U.S., of course, we saw witch hunts in Connecticut.
first person hung for witchcraft, Alice Young in the U.S.
was hung in 1647.
The Salem trials happened about 30 years later, 1692.
And you don't see a lot of overt witch hunting in the 19th century in the U.S., but yousee other things like anti-Catholicism.
(21:27):
There's a huge movement to try to oppose Catholicism, both because it was seen as animmigrant faith.
And also because of rumors of things that were going on in convents, you had anti-masonry.
Parties like the Know Nothing Party in American politics was very intent on trying toremove the influence of masons.
And so you do have a number of different panics.
(21:49):
You have the Red Scare in the early 20th century, and then you have the secondmanifestation of that in the 1950s with McCarthyism.
And that really prompted a lot of people, like for instance, Arthur Miller with theCrucible.
to connect the history of witch hunts with some of these more contemporary cultural witchhunts that were going on.
And so you had films like uh plays and films like The Crucible and Inherit the Wind, whichdealt with prosecution of John Scopes and anti-evolution.
(22:20):
That all comes to bear about the early 1960s, which is right on the eve of the explosionof the satanic pedic.
So there is kind of a weirdness in American culture.
These things could go very bad.
And of course they will again in the late 60s.
And what's interesting is growing up in my Pentecostal context, this was always coupled,the fear of Satan was always coupled with the end time dispensational theology that we
(22:50):
were given.
Like any day now, Jesus is coming back.
It could be any moment, any time.
And if you're left behind, sucks to be you, it's really gonna be bad.
And I remember...
It must have been the late seventies, but it was around the time that the Omen, that movieabout the Antichrist made its network television debut, because I remember distinctly, I
(23:15):
was a kid and my dad didn't go to church with us.
uh And so every once in a while, uh I would stay home with my dad.
And on this particular Sunday night, I stayed home.
And of course, the Omen was the movie of the week.
And I was convinced that God was sending me a warning for skipping church.
(23:37):
I mean, I was scared out of my mind.
absolutely.
And for those of us that grew up in that time period, if you were adjacent to or steepedin evangelical Christianity in the United States, that was a real fear that hung over our
heads.
(23:58):
Absolutely.
And it's amazing in this story, how fiction and artistry combines with those existentialfears and theology to help create all this.
Because if you think about the late sixties, Rosemary's baby comes out.
Just a couple of years after that, Sharon Tate is killed by the Manson family.
(24:19):
Roman Polanski, her husband, had been the director on that film.
And then in 73, the exorcist comes out.
It's fascinating to study exorcism belief and rituals in America before and after theexorcist.
There's a scholar named Joseph Laycock who just published a book called The ExorcistEffect, where they track the change in both the number of people who believe in demonic
(24:44):
possession and the rituals they believe deal with demonic possession.
And it's fascinating to see how ritual practice and the policy of different denominations
conforms to the fiction that is peddled to us in the exorcist.
those are often called the unholy trinity, Rosemary's baby, the exorcist and the omen.
(25:06):
And of course, know, early seventies, you had Hal Lindsay, who is propagating thatdispensational theology.
He also publishes a book called Satan is alive and well on planet Earth, where hecompletely leans into the idea that satanic cults are operating in the shadows and we need
to be prepared.
He also dismisses
Every aspect of Western philosophy since like Plato, he's got a section of that book wherehe critiques every philosopher.
(25:32):
He's like, oh, they're all just influenced by the devil.
And at that same time in 1972, Mike Warnke, Christian comedian, comes out claiming to havebeen a former satanic high priest.
And so all of these films are in the zeitgeist.
Dispensational belief about the end times is growing because of the reestablishment ofIsrael in the late 1940s.
(25:54):
People are latching onto that and using that as a prominent sign in their interpretationof biblical prophecy.
And so it really is just set to ignite all of this in the 70s and 80s.
Hal Lindsey never actually set dates, but he came so dangerously close so many times thatat one point had one prophecy enthusiast tell me, well, Jesus says we can't know the day
(26:18):
or the hour.
We didn't say anything about the decade or the century.
Said, well, think it was kind of implied.
So yeah, you have all of those energies brimming, all of those cultural forces brimming.
I used to joke that Christians can't make good action movies unless they're set during thetribulation.
TBN released like several action movies where, you know, Christians are all following theway of Christ until the rapture happens.
(26:44):
And then all bets are off.
Everybody who's left has got to survive the tribulation.
So even if you're converted to Christianity,
you're still going to be an action hero.
That's so interesting.
it makes me wonder how much of it does come from like not needing religion anymore becausethere are fewer crises.
(27:06):
You know, I don't know how true this is and you would know, but I have been told that likethe Catholic Church originally was like, can't be, you don't go to heaven unless you're
baptized.
and then they had to give people babies, right?
Because people weren't gonna go along with it.
So many kids died in infancy that they had to be like, okay, okay.
(27:32):
And if you think about it, right?
Like 60s, 70s in America, life is becoming pretty good for the average white evangelicals.
You're not having a lot of your children dying.
wars, famines, right?
Like these big kinds of crises until obviously Vietnam.
(27:53):
And you need a villain, right?
Like in your hero story, you must have a villain to vanquish.
You know, and this is even true with military planning.
Like I noticed like the difference between briefing pilots when there was no enemy outthere where we were gonna
(28:14):
do the exercise versus when there were people playing enemy, like American soldiersdressed up that were gonna point their laser guns at your helmet and go bang, bang, you're
out.
All of a sudden, they pay attention, they're focused, right?
And like, the reality of what's gonna happen hasn't changed.
(28:36):
Like the enemy is not anymore real, ah but they care.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's a great point, especially given the fact that, like you said, there is somuch post-war prosperity.
The kids of the fifties and the early sixties, if they're white kids, if they're whitesuburban kids living in a certain cultural context, they've got it pretty good.
(28:56):
And when you get to the late sixties, these kids who have been so privileged, a lot ofthem getting to go to college for the first time, their first generation college students,
they're frustrated with Vietnam.
They're frustrated with racism.
They're frustrated with the way that women have been treated in American society.
They're embracing all these causes.
They're disaffected because of changes that have needed to be made for so long.
(29:19):
And there's a sense of confusion on the part of their elders.
A lot of them are resentful of that and saying, what's your problem?
We gave you such a privileged upbringing and now so many of you seem to be turning againstthat.
What is the issue?
And instead of trying to really drill down and understand
What are the cultural concerns, the social justice issues that are motivating these peoplethat are creating the counterculture that are causing people to sort of drop out of
(29:44):
American society or at least to challenge its darker side.
Instead of drilling down into that, like you said, they're looking for the enemy.
And as Dana Carvey would say, as the church lady, it's Satan.
It becomes Satan.
He is, part of the problem.
He's, this is a satanic force that is taking over our kids.
They don't appreciate the wonderful American culture that we've handed to them.
(30:06):
They're trying to tear down the foundations of the country.
Not only will we get mobilized in regard to spiritual warfare, but we're going to theballot box as well.
We're going to create political action organizations.
We're going to take this country back.
Yep, and it's, you know, we've seen that in the political messaging more and more andmore, I think, coming into modern times of like, this is the fight for the soul of the
(30:30):
nation.
um But it also, it occurred to me when you were talking that like, this is a lot of firstgeneration college students have this problem where it's like, your parents and your
elders like, sacrificed so that you could go to college.
but then you come home with a college education and then they get mad that you're usingyour education to question things, to say, maybe it doesn't need to be this way.
(30:59):
I'm a 51 years old with a history degree, been teaching for about 18 years.
My parents still don't understand what I do as much as I try to explain it.
And when I'll write like critical essays, like for instance, a while back, I wrote acritical essay about Carmen and Petra.
Scott's done some great stuff on Carmen as well and contemporary Christian music.
(31:21):
And my mom would read that.
She'd be like, well, I thought you liked those people.
And I'm like, well.
You know, I've kind of grown in my preferences, so I've kind of grown beyond them in someways.
On the other hand, I can appreciate the role they had in my spiritual formation, but forme to be critical is not me attacking them, it's me being analytical.
But even that, that idea of academic detachment and that you can have at least some kindthoughts towards something while having a healthy detachment from it and a critical
(31:50):
perspective on it.
That's so hard for them to grasp.
mean, even that simple aspect, that very basic aspect of college life is something thatpeople who haven't experienced it seem to have such a hard time grasping.
And then you get a political figure like a JD Vance who says then professors are theenemy.
And they just take that at face value instead of understanding the richness that brings toour culture.
(32:15):
And what's interesting about that, Scott, is I've had similar experiences, all of us thathave pursued education uh outside of the church, outside of what church dictates as
acceptable education.
Invariably, you get those kinds of pushbacks and criticisms in part, I think, because whateducation does, I think the best thing that education does, especially a liberal arts
(32:41):
education,
is it gives you the opportunity to escape the binary, right?
The matrix that says it's either or, this or that.
And if we're talking in the context of satanic panic, uh that plays right into the binary,right?
People want to believe that there are simple solutions to these complex, nuanced problemsthat have taken centuries to create.
(33:09):
They want to reduce it.
to a very easy to understand and solvable problem, which when you put Satan in the mix,right?
And you start blaming him for all of the ills of the world.
It's the same way that we were taught to believe about the rapture, right?
We didn't have to be too concerned with the problems of this world because we wereplanning on leaving the world.
(33:36):
We were escaping from the worlds.
So that relieves us of any responsibility
for the environment, for the economy, for racism, for the patriarchy, for whatever, wehave nothing to do with that because we're not of this world and we're escaping this
world.
It's interesting when you mentioned that, I thought about some of the recent beliefs aboutrelocating to Mars, know, this planet is finished and that's a secular version of the same
(34:03):
kind of mentality that you're just going to junk the world.
Yes, and I've been saying this for a decade that the civilian version of, the robots arecoming, or like panic over AI, right?
It all has this tone of like, hey, the apocalypse is coming, right?
Like if you're a CEO and you think robots are just gonna replace everyone's job, then youdon't actually have to like prepare your people to deal with the changes that are coming.
(34:32):
um
But really this, this people want a trick, right?
People want an easy answer.
I've been using knitting as my analogy recently because people will say to me, they'relike, my gosh, you knit so well, right?
Like, how do your hands not get sore, right?
(34:53):
And they want, they want me to give them some tricks, some gloves, some supplements, somesomething.
And the answer is just, and I've been waiting to turn 38 for years so I could say this,I've been knitting as long as Jesus was alive.
Like, that's the answer, right?
Like, I have built this up for 33 years and that's why I can knit for 12 hours a day.
(35:18):
And so it's like, and that's everything in this world.
Like nobody masters anything without being spending years in it, right?
This is I think the different between experts and gurus, right?
Experts can tell you exactly where all their information came from and all of theeducation they went on to get that information.
(35:39):
Whereas a guru is like, I was visited by spirits and now I can heal you.
That was one of the most heartbreaking things about some of this for me.
I served as a youth minister for the four years that I went to college in Louisiana.
It was at a Baptist church, but of course, central Louisiana is very revivalist.
It has a very powerful, charismatic movement.
(36:02):
Pentecostals of Alexandria are a huge, influential church.
And so you have a lot of Holy Spirit theology and a lot of deep spiritual warfaretheology.
And there was a kid in my youth group whose mom had gotten divorced because her husbandcheated on her.
And she's raising two teenage kids and she's dealing with the fallout from that andobviously struggled with depression and with other things as well.
(36:24):
And there was a local deliverance ministry person who's actually a medical doctor and apretty respected member of the community that had gathered a small group and they engaged
in deliverance sessions.
And as a youth minister, as a 19 year old college kid, I kind of interacted with thisgroup and heard a lot of their theology and actually witnessed them.
(36:44):
uh doing deliverance work with various people.
And it was heartbreaking.
And for a little bit, I was very curious and I wondered, is this something that I shouldbe involved in myself?
You know, is this something that could enhance my ministry?
The more I saw of it, the more disheartening it was because they would take people uh likemy friend who were dealing with depression or someone who was dealing with alcoholism,
(37:07):
someone who was dealing with addiction to pornography.
And Satan is the enemy.
They would identify a demonic spirit.
that was the enemy, and their theology was you can't be possessed by Satan, which mostChristians would agree with.
If you're a Christian, you can't be possessed, but you could be oppressed by a spirit,meaning that that spirit would energize the natural inclinations of your flesh and make it
(37:31):
that much more overpowering.
And so they would sit the person down and they would go through this ritual where theywould pray with the person and they would identify what the problem was.
Was it the...
demon of lust is the demon of depression.
At one point they identified mammon, the demon of money, which is unusual because theyusually didn't have a problem with people having issues with greed, but they did from time
(37:55):
to time.
And then they would exercise that spirit and they would tell the person, that tie has beenbroken.
And so now you're free of that.
You're free to grow beyond that.
And I mean, of course, like you said, it's daily.
It's not something you can deal with in a night.
If you're dealing with alcoholism or if you're dealing with any of those things, it's adaily struggle and something you have to pick up and continuously do.
(38:19):
so inevitably those people would relapse.
uh, my, guy that was in my youth group, his mom just struggled desperately.
It was up and down like a yo-yo and she really needed very good counseling.
And she got a little bit of that, but most of her energy was put into these deliverancemeetings and she would have them done over and over again.
It was very heartbreaking.
(38:40):
mean, in some ways, maybe there was some spiritual support and help and all that.
But ultimately, just like we're talking about before, it is kind of a distraction.
It's diverting them from other resources that could help them better.
And fortunately, I got to a point, uh I was just 19 years old, but I started to sense, youknow, this is problematic because of that.
(39:02):
It's offering people an easy solution, a quick placebo.
that ultimately is not going to give them the release that they're seeking.
Yeah, you know, I've even noticed this with myself, where, like, I think I have the kindof, not I think I know I have the kind of anxiety where if my family's not home when they
(39:23):
said they're going to be home, I just know that they're dead on the side of the roadsomewhere, right?
Like every single time.
And I think like the more I've been healing and learning and understanding, and I thinklike part of it is such a weird thing of like,
Working to be happy in a complicated life after trauma is hard work that you do every dayand If something were to just shatter your life You wouldn't be expected to do that
(39:58):
anymore, right?
And I think there's this it sounds so crazy to talk about and we've we've talked about ita few times on this podcast as I'm like figuring this out and being like
I think that's my apocalyptic holdover is like, well, if the worst happened, then I couldjust let go and fall apart.
(40:20):
And it's something that I'm like really trying to kind of like investigate in my liferight now.
It's a real, it's a difficult task to sort of process what aspects of your belief system,uh, what aspects of your faith are based on faith and what aspects are based on fear,
because we use that fear as an early motivating response for kids.
(40:42):
I mean, we tell them you're going to burn your hand or you're going to step out thestreet, get run over.
And that's good advice.
I mean, those are real problems to be afraid of, but over the years we continue thatmechanism.
as a tool to warn people about things we think are going to be destructive.
And a part of my going back and looking at my formation at figuring out what's valuablethat I need to hang on to and what's not needs to be discarded kind of involves asking
(41:07):
that question, which of my beliefs or my inclinations are more based on faith orrationality and which ones are based on fear, that sort of fear response, which is so much
a part of the things we're talking about.
Yeah.
Scott, I think it's brilliant that you took your work and you put it into a fictionizedaccount because I think that, you know, so much of what we do in the public sphere, I know
(41:35):
that Danielle is much better at this than I am, but I tend to be, and you know this,Scott, that sometimes I tend to be like in your face and I feel like sometimes I'm taking
a rhetorical baseball bat to people's heads when I could be a lot more
persuasive.
And I think fiction is the way to do that, right?
(41:56):
Because there's something about reading fiction that sort of people bring down theirwalls, so to speak, and they're more apt to listen to a fictionalized account than perhaps
if, and I know you're working on a nonfiction book, but it's my guess that probably a lotuh of people would be more open to receive the fictionalized account than maybe what
(42:19):
you're doing in the nonfiction world.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, I've published nonfiction since 2011.
That's when I published my dissertation and off and on I've published different thingsover the years.
uh This fiction book came out in the fall and several of my friends from high school said,wow, you're a published author.
And I just sort of took that and celebrated that, know, I put out the fact, well, I'vebeen publishing these nonfiction things for years because like you said, that's what
(42:45):
people read.
That sort of thing engages people at a different level.
I love to write fiction anyway, and it's very therapeutic.
So that's probably the main foundational reason I do it.
But then after that third is the idea of the broader reach that it has and the way that itcan sort of penetrate people's natural defenses, get them engaged in the story and get
(43:07):
them thinking about things they might not have entertained before.
love J RR Tolkien's quote where he said, fiction can be an escape to reality, which isjust great.
mean,
I heard a quote recently uh from a historian, which was, we read nonfiction for knowledge,we read fiction for wisdom.
(43:27):
And was like, ooh.
That is really great.
Yeah.
I mean, this was a great opportunity to be able to bring people into that world, many ofwhom had never experienced it.
People here in Northwest Iowa, when I talked about the concept of the book, they had ahard time understanding it because they are only just now really getting pulled into
(43:47):
evangelical culture.
They've sort of had their own thing going on for a while.
And since they've read the book, they will say, do these kinds of things actually happen?
I said, yeah, you know, there are cultures that are really invested in these things.
Basically the story I'm telling in this book, which is called The Demonologist Daughters,is sort of a takeoff of the real life work of Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are the couple
(44:13):
that are the basis of the Conjuring series of films, except rather than basing it on kindof the fantasy version in the Conjuring films, it's based on the actual family.
They were very involved in paranormal investigations in the 1970s and 80s.
starting in 2012, 2011, 2012, they started making these films based on the records oftheir quote cases that Lorraine Warren, the wife had created.
(44:40):
She had written these different books over the years.
Basically their stick was if there was any kind of paranormal event, that was amanifestation of demonic activity.
And so they would rush in, whether it was the Amityville horror or, you know, somethinglike the infield poltergeist taunting or whatever, they would come in, they would do their
paranormal investigation and they would perform an exorcism of some point.
(45:05):
They have a daughter named Judy and Judy and her husband, Tony Sparrow so far have beenvery content to try to keep the legacy of her parents going.
And it's pretty lucrative legacy now with the films and all of that and the attentionthat's been newly drawn to them.
So since her mother has died, they've been very focused on that.
I was looking at their story as part of my nonfiction research and I was kind of lookingfor my next fiction topic because I had written some fiction things before.
(45:33):
And I just sort of started asking myself this question.
Okay.
Judy Warren seems very comfortable with her parents' legacy.
What would happen if you had more than one daughter and
Most of those daughters were not happy with the family legacy.
They were trying to escape it and they did successfully.
But then something happens that brings them all back.
(45:54):
What kind of scars would you carry?
What would you have to deal with in returning to that environment?
Just like Daniela was saying earlier, what kind of existential fears would you carrythroughout your life because of the way that you had been raised?
And so I kind of got this idea of the conjuring meets little women, the story of fourdaughters.
that are enmeshed in this spiritual warfare culture.
(46:16):
I won't spoil a whole lot, but two of them escape it.
One stays.
It's not a big spoiler to say one of them dies early on, and that's part of the mystery atthe heart of the story.
And so it's basically about bringing them back.
And the way I tell the story is in a series of quartets where you have two chapters set inthe present and then a third chapter set 27 years before in 1995, where you see them as
(46:42):
kids.
And you get to actually experience the world that they grew up in and understand thedifficulties they faced.
And then the fourth chapter in each quartet is taken from one of their mom's books, whichhas been used to promote the parents ministry.
And you basically get her version of the flashback chapter in chapter three.
(47:03):
And so you get to see how she has tweaked it both to popularize their ministry.
And also to kind of deal with the painful realities there.
She has really changed the story in various ways so that she can both comfort herself andshe could portray it as nobler than it actually was.
And I'll just say the book is fantastic.
(47:24):
I haven't finished it yet, but it is in my Kindle and I'm working my way through it,Scott.
And in fact, as soon as you announced it, I like to believe that I was among the first tohave purchased it.
But I have yet to finish it.
So I'll get there.
uh
appreciate you dive again.
(47:45):
I mean, I'm very intrigued.
I'm definitely gonna read it.
I'm putting together my book club list too for the upcoming year.
So maybe I need to look at that because one of the things that I've been saying recentlyis that, so cult experts have said many times that all cults are the same, Like coercive
control is kind of the same.
(48:06):
It doesn't really matter what flavor it is.
And one of the things I think that I'm doing is like,
Helping to create the language for the cult baby experience Right, like things like you'rein this world, but you're not of this world things like Having your childhood sacrificed
(48:28):
for a mission You know and just like these things that it doesn't matter whether you werein Scientology a Mormon UPCI You know recognize cult like me or
any of these, like we have these shared experiences from the perspective of the childrenbeing brought along into these beliefs that become like so big and take over their world.
(48:57):
So true.
Yeah.
One of the themes in the book involves the parents going away to these exorcism sessions,deliberate sessions for like days and days on end.
They don't know when they're going to come back.
And the oldest daughter at the age of 12 ends up having to take care of all the rest.
And that sort of becomes their life with their parents being very absent.
And every time something comes up that the parents can't do for the kids because of that.
(49:22):
The mom's phrase over and over again is, you've got to be good little soldiers for Jesus.
You're part of the Lord's army.
And so, you know, it's like a military campaign and you've got to take the hardships ofthe sacrifices.
Scott, in your estimation, uh we've talked a little bit about education and beyond that,or maybe that is the answer, right?
(49:46):
For folks that, like me, who grew up in this kind of culture and context, sort of beingable to take a step back from that and seeing it for what it is, because I think of, you
you mentioned the conjuring, and I've already seen that, you know, Mark Driscoll,
a mega church pastor is out there talking about all of these movies and saying, you know,that society is, is fascinated with Satan and the work of Satan and, you know, drumming
(50:15):
up, beating this drama of satanic panic again, because, know, it's for a different reasonthan what you mentioned earlier, but I mean, it's, it's lucrative, right?
It, it, it gets, it gets butts in the seats and it gets money in, in, in, in the offeringplate.
So, you know, how do we teach people, how do we lead people, how do we engage with folksto escape that kind of uh regressive thinking, right?
(50:46):
Where you take all of the world's problems and you say, well, it's Satan's fault.
Yeah, and that is the million dollar question today, not just in this realm, but acrossthe board right now dealing with misinformation.
It is so challenging.
One of the interesting things about looking at the late 80s and the beginning of thecrumbling of a lot of this, a lot of the challenges to claims like Mike Warnke's, there
(51:11):
was Lauren Stratford, was claiming to be survivor of satanic ritual abuse.
They came from within the church, from within evangelicalism.
You had some people who were
relatively conservative on the spectrum who were challenging these things and saying theydon't give the church a good look.
And at least in evangelical quarters, that was sort of the beginning of the end, but itwas a long, painful process.
(51:34):
It helps to have insiders to do that.
I think about those people.
I think about John Winthrop Jr.
in Connecticut, the son of the more famous John Winthrop.
He really helped to break the back of the witch trials there.
in the 1650s and 1660s because he just, even though he was a very devout believer, he hada lot of questions about the default assumptions regarding witchcraft trials.
(51:59):
And so he challenged that and began to bring it into it.
It helps to have people who can be seen as an authority figure or someone they respect toengage with those cultures.
Problem we've got right now is that we are so polarized that almost anyone who presents acontrary opinion.
His label is a minion of Satan.
(52:19):
I, it's almost hard to be an insider.
Can anyone truly be?
It almost reminds me of studying the French revolution.
And you've got someone like Robespierre who says he's the incorruptible saying, I definewho is a true son or daughter of the revolution.
And that is something, is somewhat what we have here at American society today, where it'shelpful for people within the various traditions.
(52:43):
to engage with these ideas and to be as tireless as they can be.
It was exhausting to continue pushing back against what seems like absolute intransigence,telling these stories, recounting the history, continuing to engage in the kind of spaces
that we were talking about earlier, which is often very difficult, especially when you'vehad painful experiences with them in the past, but being on social media.
(53:10):
talking to your neighbors, like Daniela mentioned earlier, having that hard conversationwith your parents, which you may have to have a few of those that back off for a little
bit or with other family members.
It's that tension preserving the relationship, but at the same time, being honest andtruthful.
I talked to so many people that speak of their family experiences right now and they say,our relationship is so shallow.
(53:36):
Because the most important values we have, the most important things in our lives, wecan't talk about without getting into a fight, but just continuing to share those things
persistently and graciously, uh, speaking the truth and love, sharing facts, sharingreality in as gracious of a way as we can manage while still being forceful enough to not
(53:58):
get run over, uh, forceful enough to be willing to take it to those who are, seem to haveno problem.
distorting reality.
And you know, that's I've watched this phenomenon even with Daniela, right?
So, so Daniela, I can't see.
I don't you did have blue hair at one point.
You look is OK.
(54:19):
So all right.
So so blue haired knitting cult lady, Daniela is getting flack from the left, right?
From from people on the left.
And and I watch this phenomenon with her.
And you're right.
The polarization.
puts people that are willing to tell the truth, case in point with Daniela, uh at oddswith who you would think would be her fiercest allies, right?
(54:49):
And Daniela, you can talk to that experience a little
Yeah, mean, you know, I will even say with being a woman veteran, like I was presentedwith this very binary choice when I was like, I want to start telling my stories and
people were like, okay, so which one are you?
Are you disgruntled or are you a proud veteran?
(55:10):
You know, and I had to go on this whole journey myself to eventually come back and belike, it's all of them, right?
Like it's...
My story of being one of the first women to go out on these combat teams is as importantas the fact that I was pulled aside and told to watch my back against these same American
soldiers, right?
(55:31):
Like I, we can hold nuance.
We can have non-complicated stories.
You know, when I first started saying I was going to talk about the cult and the army,people would say, oh, well, the cult, like that's obviously, obviously evil.
Right.
Which I still didn't agree with.
Nothing's ever obviously evil in the place where it comes from.
(55:54):
And then but I was in this very like pro veteran community.
And then people would say, but the U.S.
Army, that's a wonderful organization.
You know, and I finally started stopping and being like, let's let's, you know, hold on.
Right.
The U.S.
Army is one point three million humans trained to kill people as efficiently as possible.
(56:16):
Hmm.
know, we work hard in the modern army to be as professional and as humane and asleadership sort of focused as we can.
But neither of these organizations are either obviously good and obviously bad.
And this is actually I wrote a whole book.
I've done like a five year project on this because people try to put me in these boxes.
(56:40):
And the book that I just finished last week that comes out January 20th, I am showinglike, here's my 10 things that make you a cult, right?
And I'm gonna show them to you in the most serious cults.
And then also, here they are in our military and here they are in our regularorganizations.
(57:01):
And then, I think the thing that really unsettles people about me is then I just don'tcomfort you after that.
Yeah, the military is a cult.
We've just chosen to have 1 % of our population in a cult.
because we say we need it and we don't really want to like investigate that any further.
So we just stop there and actually just telling people like, no, look, this thing thatthis cult does, this tactic, here it is here, you know, and just letting them see that.
(57:36):
And I don't, you know, we're not gonna answer it.
We're never gonna get a definition of cult that everyone agrees on.
Just like we're never gonna get a definition of good and bad.
And quite frankly, the world doesn't come like that.
So people will say to me all the time, they'll be like, well, I don't agree witheverything you said, but I like this thing.
And I'm always like, if you agreed with everything I said, I would be a little concernedfor you.
(58:01):
Like that would be a little bit culty.
even agree with everything that I say.
Like I have to come back and call myself out on stuff.
Well, that's so true.
mean, those patterns of thought shaping, sometimes thought control, I they're so similaracross groups.
I mean, there's so many groups that would fit into that sort of cultic definition.
What are the interesting ironies to me about evangelical Christianity is the degree towhich they want you to take it seriously, but not necessarily too seriously.
(58:31):
Uh, one guy who was on Twitter at one point was responding to people who said, okay, youneed to support Trump if you're a Christian.
And this guy responded and said, okay, let me get this straight.
So you taught me not to drink, not to smoke, not to have sex before marriage and to be anabsolute outcast in high school.
And now you think I'm about to bow to peer pressure.
(58:53):
It was that irony that, mean, questioning these things, questioning this corruption,questioning this brutality and cruelty.
That's who you taught me to be.
But so many people are looking at their parents and say,
This person that you're supporting is the exact opposite of everything you ever taught meto be.
And it's amazing how the culture still blows back against that and says, no, you're notone of us.
(59:18):
And the response often is a very fundamental way.
I bore you that you are because I haven't abandoned these principles.
I'm writing a musical and I'm putting this line in the musical that just says, aren't wethe fruits that you've been raising up so well?
oh You know, and we've kind of had this conversation a little bit as Children of Godsurvivors, like we grew up in such isolation that everything about me was made by the
(59:51):
Children of God.
And this is kind of, again, the funny part about these kind of cults or these closedthinking.
It's like, you know, they told me to go fight the system and that's what I'm doing.
Like they told me to, you know, to like not take things that were being presented by theworld and yet they're upset when you then turn around and see like, hey, what about this
(01:00:15):
definition?
But yeah, it's even been so interesting to me how like,
people want to force me to be a leader and to give them guidance.
And they're very uncomfortable with me just being like, nope, here's the facts.
Like right now I'm the only call expert that I know of that has military experience andI'm just gonna line these two up and leave them here for you.
(01:00:42):
And I'm just gonna talk about the history of blondness and white supremacy.
And then people come back and be like, oh, so is it not okay?
uh
And I'm like, no, I'm not your morality police.
I'm not your leader.
I'm not your pastor.
there's no simple answer.
Think about these things.
I just got to teach you my spring semester course on contemporary world civilizations.
(01:01:05):
And I always enjoy pointing out the fact that the major proponent in Germany of the 1930sand 1940s of blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Aryan German supremacy was a short, stumpy,
black-haired Austrian who's proclaiming this.
I mean, just to go back to the amazing dynamics of cultic belief, people are buying that.
(01:01:26):
As the short, stumpy, unappealing guy who looks nothing like the ideal he's selling, it'sconvincing people this is the human ideal.
It's just amazing.
uh Kinda sounds like Trump calling Taylor Swift unattractive.
ha
Are questioning the musical ability of Bruce Sprakestein?
Seriously?
right.
All right.
(01:01:46):
All right.
Best thing I heard recently was like Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen need to throw afree concert in D.C.
on the day of the parade.
I was like,
That would be great.
Hey, Scott, thanks so much for being here.
If folks want to buy your book, which I encourage, if they want to follow up with you, ifthey'd like to get you to come speak to their group or their organization, what's the best
(01:02:09):
way to get in touch with you?
My website is kscotcoalpepper.com and that's got links to all those things like purchaselinks for the book.
It's got a link to my newsletter and it's also got links for speaking engagements and Iwould love to come share with people.
The book is available through Amazon, through Barnes and Noble and pretty much any onlineoutlet.
(01:02:30):
It's available through Lightning Spark, which services all the online bookstores and allof that.
So you can get it through any of those outlets and in two weeks you will be able to getit.
through Audible, uh iTunes, and Amazon Music in audiobook format.
Yeah, and tell us about the, you had an actress that is involved with this project, right?
(01:02:52):
Yes, she's an audio book producer from Georgia.
Her name is Haley Henderson.
She is magnificent.
I just did an interview with her earlier today, uh, to create some videos we couldrelease, on the eve of the actual release date.
was great.
She was fantastic.
She just infused it with so much emotion and she's got a background in, uh, sort ofstudying art and theology.
(01:03:16):
So she got the character, she got the story, she could do the
nuances of academic conversation that came up every once in a while, it was great.
So I'm really excited about that coming out.
Well, congratulations, Scott, and much success to all of your endeavors.
I'm proud of you, my friend, and thrilled that we had the opportunity to reconnect on thisepisode.
(01:03:40):
Thank you so much, Scott.
Appreciate you both and the important work that you're doing.
Thanks so much for sharing your wisdom with us.
Thank you.
until next time, I'm Scott Lloyd for Daniela Mistenek Young,
And we'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of America.
Welcome to Cults and the Culting of America podcast.
My name is Scott Lloyd.
I am joined by knitting cult lady, Daniela Mesteneck Young.
Daniela, it's good to see you.
Good to see you too.
It's been a minute since we've had the opportunity to be on together, but I'm reallythrilled and excited about tonight's uh episode because a long time friend of mine, uh Dr.
(00:50):
Scott Culpepper is joining us.
Scott, it's so good to see you.
Great to see you too, Scott.
Good to be with you and Daniela.
Absolutely.
And Scott Culpepper and I go way back here.
were doing podcasts before anyone was listening.
uh thanks to Daniela now, people are actually listening to what we have to say, Scott.
(01:14):
So this is going to be a oh great show.
fantastic.
Thank you so much for the invitation.
Yeah.
So, um, so the last time we were together, you were a history professor at the sameinstitution that where I was a communications professor.
think that was the last time we were together in person.
Uh, but, uh, just for, for my sake and for everyone listening, what have you been up tolately?
(01:39):
Yeah, I left Louisiana in 2012 and I've been in Northwest Iowa for almost 13 years now,which is so hard to believe.
A lot of life happens in 13 years.
I've been teaching history here at a small Christian university in Northwest Iowa.
I get to teach like early modern European history, Renaissance Reformation, class of witchtrials, Latin American history.
(02:02):
And then I also get to teach religion and American culture.
So it's great.
I have the best of both worlds.
I can do the Atlantic world European thing.
And then I can still incorporate my training in religious studies and theology as well.
So it's a lot of fun.
It's been a great experience.
I've got fantastic students.
uh In the intervening years, I've started doing some research on the satanic panic, whichis part of what we'll talk about today.
(02:26):
Some of it's stemming from my experiences in Louisiana and earlier in high school and allof that, and just sort of feeding into my academic studies.
This last year, I published a fiction book in the fall.
which stems from that research I'm doing for a nonfiction book that I'll publish down theroad soon.
So that's been my current research interest and work.
(02:48):
And aside from that, grading papers, teaching great students and trying to keep my headabove water.
I love it, I love it.
writing books is hard.
So I definitely hope we get to hear more about your book.
um The Satanic Panic.
This is a hard one for people because anytime you bring up that this was not real, peoplego straight to how could you not believe victims?
(03:14):
Can you kind of like...
give us a little orientation to the satanic panic and what it was and how it ties intolike religious studies.
Absolutely.
It's so amazing how few people still know much about the Satanic panic.
There are times when I'm talking to people like you who've had some experience with it andyou think, surely everyone must know because we experienced it so deeply.
(03:38):
But in many ways, it's one of the biggest out of the open public things that so manypeople still don't know anything about.
And my students and my classes are just completely unaware.
I'll bring up the prohibitions against Dungeons and Dragons.
Today, you know, I teach on a Christian college campus.
play Dungeons and Dragons as part of the gaming guild there.
They think absolutely nothing of it.
(03:59):
So they're shocked at the panic, the hysteria over the game of the eighties.
Basically it was this moment in American history and culture from roughly about the mid1960s to about the mid 1990s when you had a confluence of cultural forces coming together,
changes in mainstream culture, concerns about
(04:20):
harmful practices and activities, and a lot of popular culture creations that focused onthe occult that sort of coalesced together to create this societal panic where you had
people not just in the places you would expect, places like conservative churches ordenominations that were really in the spiritual warfare theology, but outside of those
(04:41):
circles as well, law enforcement, psychologists, social workers, uh people concerned thatthere were actual
cult members throughout the country focused intently on damaging young people and seekingto corrupt the culture.
It was amazing how far it branched out into the various circles of society, far beyond theareas where those things usually percolate.
(05:07):
And to some degree, it's very much a phenomenon of the late 20th century, at least theparticulars of it.
But in other ways, it's also a tale as old as time.
You go back to the witch trials of the early modern period and some of the same sorts ofthrough lines are there.
The same sorts of cultural tendencies, they seem like they recycle.
I had a friend at one point that said that history doesn't necessarily repeat, but it doesrhyme very often.
(05:31):
And there is a rhythmic sense to a lot of this too.
You get cycles of this kind of thing.
And what was so interesting about the satanic panic in the late 20th century, we allassume that we were so enlightened that such things could happen.
in that place, in that time.
And of course, we discovered very quickly that that enchantment of the universe of realityhasn't gone away.
(05:53):
It might go into hibernation sometimes, but people are still afraid of what goes bump ofthe night.
They're still concerned that there are mystical powers out there.
And one of the things that I've been really drawn to in my study, The Satanic Panic, isthe sense in which so much of it was like a proxy war, sort of a
a strategy of distraction in many ways, because you had people mobilized to fight thesecultural enemies or perceive cultural enemies fueled by satanic power, they believed,
(06:25):
while ignoring other very real societal issues that were going on right in front of them.
But those were hard to deal with.
They were complicated.
They required deep thinking.
It was much easier to mobilize against these perceived cultural threats.
And what's interesting about this, we lived through this, Scott, in such a profound waybecause I remember in the churches that I was involved with, the institutions of higher
(06:54):
education, this was something that was accepted among so many people without an ounce ofevidence.
It was like, where is the evidence that all of this is taking place?
And I laugh at the lunacy of it, but it had very real world implications, very profoundimplications, negative implications for a lot of people.
(07:18):
think about the story of the West Memphis Three, and that was a close proximity to where Igrew up in Northeast Arkansas.
And I remember back in the 90s, these three young men uh were assumed to be guilty becausethey were a little bit out of the mainstream.
when it came to their practice of religion or the way that they behaved, the way that theyacted.
(07:43):
And so when these heinous murders took place, it was just assumed, well, you know, thishad to be a satanic cult.
And these three young men, their lives were devastated for many, many years until theywere recently released.
Yeah, it was horrific.
And their story is so powerful.
Damien Echols tells that story often on podcasts and it is just moving and heartbreaking.
(08:09):
And one of the things that was so crazy about that episode is it's the early nineties.
There has been an office of the FBI, like you said, investigating this intensively,looking for the evidence that most people are not even caring to be concerned with.
And they're reaching their conclusions by the early nineties that there's nothing there.
The FBI is publishing a special report in 1993 and 94, which states, we have found noevidence of satanic cult activity.
(08:36):
And yet the persistence of these myths, those three boys are being railroaded at just thattime.
You know, it has interesting echoes to me of kind of what's going on right now with thisalmost like, I call it fantasizing about the apocalypse or apocalypticizing, you know, and
you talked about this being like a proxy war.
(08:58):
And I think, you know, a lot of what fueled this into the 80s and 90s was people gettingon the internet and people understanding like the depths to which
children were being abused.
People, you know, we were learning about the Catholic church, right?
Like people are learning that the people in their families and their churches and theirreligions are the ones abusing the children.
(09:24):
And they don't want to have that discussion.
So they go on this imaginary war path about satanic rituals.
And, you know, I've noticed this even on the left with liberals in the social justicearena.
that so many of us have left religious extremism.
(09:44):
But I don't think we've deconstructed the like, rapture and the panic and the, you know, Ihave people like asking me like, what are we gonna do in the revolution?
But they're not comfortable enough to have a conversation with their dad or theirfather-in-law or like the person in their life that is actually voting for this stuff that
(10:06):
they think is ending the world.
Yeah, it's so true.
Christianity Today has been doing a podcast called The Devil in the Deep Blue Sea.
And I like the way they have structured that because they've compared the response toDamien Echols and the West Memphis Three to the way that the church dealt with the
revelations about the Duggars and the difference.
(10:27):
Like these guys, the West Memphis Three, they weren't actually guilty of this crime, butthey were not given the benefit of the doubt.
The Duggars...
given the benefit of the doubt to the nth degree because they look like us.
They sound like us.
They fit the evangelical mold.
But of course, those who don't fit the mold, they're suspect.
They're problematic.
(10:47):
They could be bearers of evil and darkness.
And that's what it's always been, right?
The witch hunts have always been some form of you're not like us, right?
Like you're a woman who is living on the edge of town, surviving on her own, like almostlike showing the lie to, right?
(11:10):
Like the cult tells you the small town is like, you have to live this way, right?
You have to live this way under our rules if you want to be valid.
and the people living on the fringes are showing kind of like the lie to these socialrules and social norms.
And I think in some ways we just can't tolerate that.
Absolutely.
It can't turn out well for them because if it turns out well for them, then maybe that's acritique of the way that we have been living.
(11:35):
There's not that sense that there's room for acceptable differences.
Pluralism, know, acceptable pluralism for all of us that we can all thrive and stillpursue different paths.
That's one way I feel like evangelical Christianity sometimes really shoots itself in thefoot because they work so hard in youth group context to make you afraid of the world.
(11:57):
and those in the world.
And the portrayal they give you of those who are not committed to Christ is they'remiserable people, they're awful people, they're immoral sort of people, and you leave that
context and you actually encounter these people.
Not only do you often discover that they're great people, they're often better people thanthe people that you've been encountering in youth group or in church circles.
(12:19):
uh Their morality is sometimes deeper and purer and more consistent.
And so creating those straw men, which the satanic panic, witch hunts, all the kind ofmoral panics throughout the history of the world do is just destructive to Christianity.
In the end, it hurts the trust that people have in the church when they will give theseinaccurate pictures of other people.
(12:47):
And when people start to discover the reality, they'll start asking the question, well, ifthey were wrong about this, what else are they wrong about?
And the abuse crisis is of course such a huge part of all of this because a lot of theconcerns, the hysteria that fed into the early years of the satanic panic involved
concerns about satanic ritual abuse, rumors about abuse happening in daycares, mostinfamously in the McMartin preschool case beginning in 1983 and going on until the very
(13:17):
early nineties.
There were allegations that daycare workers were taking kids to secret tunnels below thedaycare.
engaging in satanic rituals, flying around the room and just all kinds of things.
You could look at the interviews that some social workers conducted with the kids at thedaycare.
You can follow the pattern of the interviews and you could see where the interviewers areplanting suggestions, which the kids are eventually going to take up because just like
(13:45):
previously in the witch trials where they would question someone for days until finallythey were like, okay, I'll say whatever you want me to say.
Just stop this, let me sleep, let me eat.
These kids are being questioned by these adults and they decide, you know, they'reaccustomed to asking, okay, what do I have to do to make these adults happy?
And so eventually they'll start parroting back the suggestions the adults are making untilthese huge castles are built in the air.
(14:11):
There's a picture of the McMartin grounds where concerned parrot showed up.
and dug up the grounds.
It looks like dig, dug, you know, in the yard.
They're like these trenches that parents have dug.
It's an imagined space.
There is no basement below the school.
And a lot of people have talked about how maybe part of that was influenced by thefeelings that people had as more kids were going to daycare, more women are joining the
(14:38):
workforce.
There are some anxieties about how their kids maybe are being cared for during the day.
You've got
books like Michelle Remembers coming out where Michelle Smith, interviewed by hercounselor, later husband, Lawrence Pasdar, says that she recalls memories of abuse and it
just begins to mushroom.
And like you said, you get this visceral fear that they are menacing people out to harmour children while there is an epidemic of abuse in both Roman Catholic Church and
(15:09):
evangelical churches.
And like you said, as the statistics start to pile up, it becomes more evident that whereabuse is happening, it's usually happening within families perpetrated by someone who is
known to the family, maybe even a family member.
Yeah.
You know, it's I want to say it's interesting this programming of the fear.
(15:32):
You know, it makes me think of so I'm an organizational psychologist.
so we study Adam Smith.
Hate that guy who, you know, originally theorizes that like 80 percent of humanity isshiftless and awful.
And we'll just try to get away with everything.
Right.
And 20 percent.
(15:53):
are the ones that want the world to like function and be in place and work.
And like, he should just stay to finances, right?
Because obviously, turns out it's actually the opposite.
And now we have empirical science and we know that like 80 % of society wants the world towork nicely.
(16:13):
And you know, it's interesting in security policy now, you're setting your policies forthose 20 % of people, right?
You're slowing down the 80%.
to catch the 20 % that are actually doing the thing.
And I kind of feel like when you were talking, I was just thinking of that.
And like when you get out of a cult or when you get out of these cults of churchianity, Icall it, that has inculcated this fear into you and told you like the whole world is bad.
(16:42):
And it's almost like flipping that.
percentage, right?
It's like, yes, there are bad people out there that are gonna do horrible things to you,but the majority of people you're gonna meet are gonna be nice and accepting and like it's
not what we've been told or taught to think.
Absolutely.
There's so many people who've gone through the process that some people calldeconstruction, where they first of all had to learn to trust the world and not be afraid
(17:07):
of the unknown out there.
And then having gone through that process, they have to relearn if they're inclined to howto trust the church again, because some of the paradigms they were given were inaccurate.
They were distracting or even fear producing, and they have to go back and decide, youknow, how do I
Be critical again and be a person of faith and combine those things.
(17:30):
And that's no easy thing.
That's a big part of what the fiction book that I wrote deals with is the idea of thesegirls who are raised in an environment like that on steroids, like a supercharged, uh ever
present spiritual warfare environment.
What would you carry forward into adulthood?
What kind of scars would you wrestle with throughout your life?
(17:51):
What would you do if you had to go back and confront it?
Those are the kinds of things I really enjoy dealing with.
in writing that.
Scott, it strikes me oh that you and I were raised in an environment in church cultureswhere Satan was a convenient foe.
He was a uh frequent foil, if you will, especially oh if there was something that wasgoing on in the church or something in the leadership's life that needed a convenient
(18:21):
distraction, right?
Don't look at all the bad things that are happening over here.
Look at what Satan is attempting to do in the world.
And we'd all get excited and caught up with that.
I want you to talk a little bit about the history of this, even going back, you mentionedthe witch trials and things of that nature.
But before you do, Daniela, I'm curious um in the children of God, what did the role ofSatan look like?
(18:49):
Was he something that...
you guys heard about often, what did that look like in your context?
Yes, I mean, the children of God was sort of pretending to be Christian, right, or basedin Christian theology.
So we had Satan.
But I would say much, much more, we had the United States.
The United States was who he had decided was our bad guy.
(19:13):
And so was, you know, America, Babylon, the whore.
um And turns out, as I would go to figure out as an adult, like a big part of that was toget his people living abroad.
because it's much harder to leave your cult when you're also being geographically abusedand you're in other parts of the world.
(19:33):
um So yeah, we definitely had Satan and being used for whatever and everything was thedevil, especially if you had any sort of feelings, right?
It was the devil.
um But the sort of big bad guy out there that was gonna get us, that was gonna end theworld was always.
(19:54):
United States.
Uncle Sam.
that's interesting.
Well, uh Scott, going back throughout history, has this uh sort of satanic panic, itshowed up frequently in our history as a nation, I would think.
It has.
And not only that, but different manifestations of similar things as well.
(20:15):
If you look at the medieval period, for a long time, you had folk magic sort of coexistingwith the robust Christian theology.
And part of the reason for that is because as they converted Germanic tribes after thefall of the Roman Empire, they had a lot of those folk practices, and sometimes the church
challenged those, but sometimes they just sort of let them be.
They felt like it was more...
(20:36):
more negative, more problematic to challenge those and just to let them grow.
You kind of got to change towards the end of the medieval period, 15th century or so,there begins to be an attachment with folk practices with sort of a theology of demonism
and ideas about Satan making pacts with people.
And at that point, you really get the heyday of witch hunting from the late 15th centuryuntil about the early 1800s or so.
(21:02):
In the U.S., of course, we saw witch hunts in Connecticut.
first person hung for witchcraft, Alice Young in the U.S.
was hung in 1647.
The Salem trials happened about 30 years later, 1692.
And you don't see a lot of overt witch hunting in the 19th century in the U.S., but yousee other things like anti-Catholicism.
(21:27):
There's a huge movement to try to oppose Catholicism, both because it was seen as animmigrant faith.
And also because of rumors of things that were going on in convents, you had anti-masonry.
Parties like the Know Nothing Party in American politics was very intent on trying toremove the influence of masons.
And so you do have a number of different panics.
(21:49):
You have the Red Scare in the early 20th century, and then you have the secondmanifestation of that in the 1950s with McCarthyism.
And that really prompted a lot of people, like for instance, Arthur Miller with theCrucible.
to connect the history of witch hunts with some of these more contemporary cultural witchhunts that were going on.
And so you had films like uh plays and films like The Crucible and Inherit the Wind, whichdealt with prosecution of John Scopes and anti-evolution.
(22:20):
That all comes to bear about the early 1960s, which is right on the eve of the explosionof the satanic pedic.
So there is kind of a weirdness in American culture.
These things could go very bad.
And of course they will again in the late 60s.
And what's interesting is growing up in my Pentecostal context, this was always coupled,the fear of Satan was always coupled with the end time dispensational theology that we
(22:50):
were given.
Like any day now, Jesus is coming back.
It could be any moment, any time.
And if you're left behind, sucks to be you, it's really gonna be bad.
And I remember...
It must have been the late seventies, but it was around the time that the Omen, that movieabout the Antichrist made its network television debut, because I remember distinctly, I
(23:15):
was a kid and my dad didn't go to church with us.
uh And so every once in a while, uh I would stay home with my dad.
And on this particular Sunday night, I stayed home.
And of course, the Omen was the movie of the week.
And I was convinced that God was sending me a warning for skipping church.
(23:37):
I mean, I was scared out of my mind.
absolutely.
And for those of us that grew up in that time period, if you were adjacent to or steepedin evangelical Christianity in the United States, that was a real fear that hung over our
heads.
(23:58):
Absolutely.
And it's amazing in this story, how fiction and artistry combines with those existentialfears and theology to help create all this.
Because if you think about the late sixties, Rosemary's baby comes out.
Just a couple of years after that, Sharon Tate is killed by the Manson family.
(24:19):
Roman Polanski, her husband, had been the director on that film.
And then in 73, the exorcist comes out.
It's fascinating to study exorcism belief and rituals in America before and after theexorcist.
There's a scholar named Joseph Laycock who just published a book called The ExorcistEffect, where they track the change in both the number of people who believe in demonic
(24:44):
possession and the rituals they believe deal with demonic possession.
And it's fascinating to see how ritual practice and the policy of different denominations
conforms to the fiction that is peddled to us in the exorcist.
those are often called the unholy trinity, Rosemary's baby, the exorcist and the omen.
(25:06):
And of course, know, early seventies, you had Hal Lindsay, who is propagating thatdispensational theology.
He also publishes a book called Satan is alive and well on planet Earth, where hecompletely leans into the idea that satanic cults are operating in the shadows and we need
to be prepared.
He also dismisses
Every aspect of Western philosophy since like Plato, he's got a section of that book wherehe critiques every philosopher.
(25:32):
He's like, oh, they're all just influenced by the devil.
And at that same time in 1972, Mike Warnke, Christian comedian, comes out claiming to havebeen a former satanic high priest.
And so all of these films are in the zeitgeist.
Dispensational belief about the end times is growing because of the reestablishment ofIsrael in the late 1940s.
(25:54):
People are latching onto that and using that as a prominent sign in their interpretationof biblical prophecy.
And so it really is just set to ignite all of this in the 70s and 80s.
Hal Lindsey never actually set dates, but he came so dangerously close so many times thatat one point had one prophecy enthusiast tell me, well, Jesus says we can't know the day
(26:18):
or the hour.
We didn't say anything about the decade or the century.
Said, well, think it was kind of implied.
So yeah, you have all of those energies brimming, all of those cultural forces brimming.
I used to joke that Christians can't make good action movies unless they're set during thetribulation.
TBN released like several action movies where, you know, Christians are all following theway of Christ until the rapture happens.
(26:44):
And then all bets are off.
Everybody who's left has got to survive the tribulation.
So even if you're converted to Christianity,
you're still going to be an action hero.
That's so interesting.
it makes me wonder how much of it does come from like not needing religion anymore becausethere are fewer crises.
(27:06):
You know, I don't know how true this is and you would know, but I have been told that likethe Catholic Church originally was like, can't be, you don't go to heaven unless you're
baptized.
and then they had to give people babies, right?
Because people weren't gonna go along with it.
So many kids died in infancy that they had to be like, okay, okay.
(27:32):
And if you think about it, right?
Like 60s, 70s in America, life is becoming pretty good for the average white evangelicals.
You're not having a lot of your children dying.
wars, famines, right?
Like these big kinds of crises until obviously Vietnam.
(27:53):
And you need a villain, right?
Like in your hero story, you must have a villain to vanquish.
You know, and this is even true with military planning.
Like I noticed like the difference between briefing pilots when there was no enemy outthere where we were gonna
(28:14):
do the exercise versus when there were people playing enemy, like American soldiersdressed up that were gonna point their laser guns at your helmet and go bang, bang, you're
out.
All of a sudden, they pay attention, they're focused, right?
And like, the reality of what's gonna happen hasn't changed.
(28:36):
Like the enemy is not anymore real, ah but they care.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's a great point, especially given the fact that, like you said, there is somuch post-war prosperity.
The kids of the fifties and the early sixties, if they're white kids, if they're whitesuburban kids living in a certain cultural context, they've got it pretty good.
(28:56):
And when you get to the late sixties, these kids who have been so privileged, a lot ofthem getting to go to college for the first time, their first generation college students,
they're frustrated with Vietnam.
They're frustrated with racism.
They're frustrated with the way that women have been treated in American society.
They're embracing all these causes.
They're disaffected because of changes that have needed to be made for so long.
(29:19):
And there's a sense of confusion on the part of their elders.
A lot of them are resentful of that and saying, what's your problem?
We gave you such a privileged upbringing and now so many of you seem to be turning againstthat.
What is the issue?
And instead of trying to really drill down and understand
What are the cultural concerns, the social justice issues that are motivating these peoplethat are creating the counterculture that are causing people to sort of drop out of
(29:44):
American society or at least to challenge its darker side.
Instead of drilling down into that, like you said, they're looking for the enemy.
And as Dana Carvey would say, as the church lady, it's Satan.
It becomes Satan.
He is, part of the problem.
He's, this is a satanic force that is taking over our kids.
They don't appreciate the wonderful American culture that we've handed to them.
(30:06):
They're trying to tear down the foundations of the country.
Not only will we get mobilized in regard to spiritual warfare, but we're going to theballot box as well.
We're going to create political action organizations.
We're going to take this country back.
Yep, and it's, you know, we've seen that in the political messaging more and more andmore, I think, coming into modern times of like, this is the fight for the soul of the
(30:30):
nation.
um But it also, it occurred to me when you were talking that like, this is a lot of firstgeneration college students have this problem where it's like, your parents and your
elders like, sacrificed so that you could go to college.
but then you come home with a college education and then they get mad that you're usingyour education to question things, to say, maybe it doesn't need to be this way.
(30:59):
I'm a 51 years old with a history degree, been teaching for about 18 years.
My parents still don't understand what I do as much as I try to explain it.
And when I'll write like critical essays, like for instance, a while back, I wrote acritical essay about Carmen and Petra.
Scott's done some great stuff on Carmen as well and contemporary Christian music.
(31:21):
And my mom would read that.
She'd be like, well, I thought you liked those people.
And I'm like, well.
You know, I've kind of grown in my preferences, so I've kind of grown beyond them in someways.
On the other hand, I can appreciate the role they had in my spiritual formation, but forme to be critical is not me attacking them, it's me being analytical.
But even that, that idea of academic detachment and that you can have at least some kindthoughts towards something while having a healthy detachment from it and a critical
(31:50):
perspective on it.
That's so hard for them to grasp.
mean, even that simple aspect, that very basic aspect of college life is something thatpeople who haven't experienced it seem to have such a hard time grasping.
And then you get a political figure like a JD Vance who says then professors are theenemy.
And they just take that at face value instead of understanding the richness that brings toour culture.
(32:15):
And what's interesting about that, Scott, is I've had similar experiences, all of us thathave pursued education uh outside of the church, outside of what church dictates as
acceptable education.
Invariably, you get those kinds of pushbacks and criticisms in part, I think, because whateducation does, I think the best thing that education does, especially a liberal arts
(32:41):
education,
is it gives you the opportunity to escape the binary, right?
The matrix that says it's either or, this or that.
And if we're talking in the context of satanic panic, uh that plays right into the binary,right?
People want to believe that there are simple solutions to these complex, nuanced problemsthat have taken centuries to create.
(33:09):
They want to reduce it.
to a very easy to understand and solvable problem, which when you put Satan in the mix,right?
And you start blaming him for all of the ills of the world.
It's the same way that we were taught to believe about the rapture, right?
We didn't have to be too concerned with the problems of this world because we wereplanning on leaving the world.
(33:36):
We were escaping from the worlds.
So that relieves us of any responsibility
for the environment, for the economy, for racism, for the patriarchy, for whatever, wehave nothing to do with that because we're not of this world and we're escaping this
world.
It's interesting when you mentioned that, I thought about some of the recent beliefs aboutrelocating to Mars, know, this planet is finished and that's a secular version of the same
(34:03):
kind of mentality that you're just going to junk the world.
Yes, and I've been saying this for a decade that the civilian version of, the robots arecoming, or like panic over AI, right?
It all has this tone of like, hey, the apocalypse is coming, right?
Like if you're a CEO and you think robots are just gonna replace everyone's job, then youdon't actually have to like prepare your people to deal with the changes that are coming.
(34:32):
um
But really this, this people want a trick, right?
People want an easy answer.
I've been using knitting as my analogy recently because people will say to me, they'relike, my gosh, you knit so well, right?
Like, how do your hands not get sore, right?
(34:53):
And they want, they want me to give them some tricks, some gloves, some supplements, somesomething.
And the answer is just, and I've been waiting to turn 38 for years so I could say this,I've been knitting as long as Jesus was alive.
Like, that's the answer, right?
Like, I have built this up for 33 years and that's why I can knit for 12 hours a day.
(35:18):
And so it's like, and that's everything in this world.
Like nobody masters anything without being spending years in it, right?
This is I think the different between experts and gurus, right?
Experts can tell you exactly where all their information came from and all of theeducation they went on to get that information.
(35:39):
Whereas a guru is like, I was visited by spirits and now I can heal you.
That was one of the most heartbreaking things about some of this for me.
I served as a youth minister for the four years that I went to college in Louisiana.
It was at a Baptist church, but of course, central Louisiana is very revivalist.
It has a very powerful, charismatic movement.
(36:02):
Pentecostals of Alexandria are a huge, influential church.
And so you have a lot of Holy Spirit theology and a lot of deep spiritual warfaretheology.
And there was a kid in my youth group whose mom had gotten divorced because her husbandcheated on her.
And she's raising two teenage kids and she's dealing with the fallout from that andobviously struggled with depression and with other things as well.
(36:24):
And there was a local deliverance ministry person who's actually a medical doctor and apretty respected member of the community that had gathered a small group and they engaged
in deliverance sessions.
And as a youth minister, as a 19 year old college kid, I kind of interacted with thisgroup and heard a lot of their theology and actually witnessed them.
(36:44):
uh doing deliverance work with various people.
And it was heartbreaking.
And for a little bit, I was very curious and I wondered, is this something that I shouldbe involved in myself?
You know, is this something that could enhance my ministry?
The more I saw of it, the more disheartening it was because they would take people uh likemy friend who were dealing with depression or someone who was dealing with alcoholism,
(37:07):
someone who was dealing with addiction to pornography.
And Satan is the enemy.
They would identify a demonic spirit.
that was the enemy, and their theology was you can't be possessed by Satan, which mostChristians would agree with.
If you're a Christian, you can't be possessed, but you could be oppressed by a spirit,meaning that that spirit would energize the natural inclinations of your flesh and make it
(37:31):
that much more overpowering.
And so they would sit the person down and they would go through this ritual where theywould pray with the person and they would identify what the problem was.
Was it the...
demon of lust is the demon of depression.
At one point they identified mammon, the demon of money, which is unusual because theyusually didn't have a problem with people having issues with greed, but they did from time
(37:55):
to time.
And then they would exercise that spirit and they would tell the person, that tie has beenbroken.
And so now you're free of that.
You're free to grow beyond that.
And I mean, of course, like you said, it's daily.
It's not something you can deal with in a night.
If you're dealing with alcoholism or if you're dealing with any of those things, it's adaily struggle and something you have to pick up and continuously do.
(38:19):
so inevitably those people would relapse.
uh, my, guy that was in my youth group, his mom just struggled desperately.
It was up and down like a yo-yo and she really needed very good counseling.
And she got a little bit of that, but most of her energy was put into these deliverancemeetings and she would have them done over and over again.
It was very heartbreaking.
(38:40):
mean, in some ways, maybe there was some spiritual support and help and all that.
But ultimately, just like we're talking about before, it is kind of a distraction.
It's diverting them from other resources that could help them better.
And fortunately, I got to a point, uh I was just 19 years old, but I started to sense, youknow, this is problematic because of that.
(39:02):
It's offering people an easy solution, a quick placebo.
that ultimately is not going to give them the release that they're seeking.
Yeah, you know, I've even noticed this with myself, where, like, I think I have the kindof, not I think I know I have the kind of anxiety where if my family's not home when they
(39:23):
said they're going to be home, I just know that they're dead on the side of the roadsomewhere, right?
Like every single time.
And I think like the more I've been healing and learning and understanding, and I thinklike part of it is such a weird thing of like,
Working to be happy in a complicated life after trauma is hard work that you do every dayand If something were to just shatter your life You wouldn't be expected to do that
(39:58):
anymore, right?
And I think there's this it sounds so crazy to talk about and we've we've talked about ita few times on this podcast as I'm like figuring this out and being like
I think that's my apocalyptic holdover is like, well, if the worst happened, then I couldjust let go and fall apart.
(40:20):
And it's something that I'm like really trying to kind of like investigate in my liferight now.
It's a real, it's a difficult task to sort of process what aspects of your belief system,uh, what aspects of your faith are based on faith and what aspects are based on fear,
because we use that fear as an early motivating response for kids.
(40:42):
I mean, we tell them you're going to burn your hand or you're going to step out thestreet, get run over.
And that's good advice.
I mean, those are real problems to be afraid of, but over the years we continue thatmechanism.
as a tool to warn people about things we think are going to be destructive.
And a part of my going back and looking at my formation at figuring out what's valuablethat I need to hang on to and what's not needs to be discarded kind of involves asking
(41:07):
that question, which of my beliefs or my inclinations are more based on faith orrationality and which ones are based on fear, that sort of fear response, which is so much
a part of the things we're talking about.
Yeah.
Scott, I think it's brilliant that you took your work and you put it into a fictionizedaccount because I think that, you know, so much of what we do in the public sphere, I know
(41:35):
that Danielle is much better at this than I am, but I tend to be, and you know this,Scott, that sometimes I tend to be like in your face and I feel like sometimes I'm taking
a rhetorical baseball bat to people's heads when I could be a lot more
persuasive.
And I think fiction is the way to do that, right?
(41:56):
Because there's something about reading fiction that sort of people bring down theirwalls, so to speak, and they're more apt to listen to a fictionalized account than perhaps
if, and I know you're working on a nonfiction book, but it's my guess that probably a lotuh of people would be more open to receive the fictionalized account than maybe what
(42:19):
you're doing in the nonfiction world.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, I've published nonfiction since 2011.
That's when I published my dissertation and off and on I've published different thingsover the years.
uh This fiction book came out in the fall and several of my friends from high school said,wow, you're a published author.
And I just sort of took that and celebrated that, know, I put out the fact, well, I'vebeen publishing these nonfiction things for years because like you said, that's what
(42:45):
people read.
That sort of thing engages people at a different level.
I love to write fiction anyway, and it's very therapeutic.
So that's probably the main foundational reason I do it.
But then after that third is the idea of the broader reach that it has and the way that itcan sort of penetrate people's natural defenses, get them engaged in the story and get
(43:07):
them thinking about things they might not have entertained before.
love J RR Tolkien's quote where he said, fiction can be an escape to reality, which isjust great.
mean,
I heard a quote recently uh from a historian, which was, we read nonfiction for knowledge,we read fiction for wisdom.
(43:27):
And was like, ooh.
That is really great.
Yeah.
I mean, this was a great opportunity to be able to bring people into that world, many ofwhom had never experienced it.
People here in Northwest Iowa, when I talked about the concept of the book, they had ahard time understanding it because they are only just now really getting pulled into
(43:47):
evangelical culture.
They've sort of had their own thing going on for a while.
And since they've read the book, they will say, do these kinds of things actually happen?
I said, yeah, you know, there are cultures that are really invested in these things.
Basically the story I'm telling in this book, which is called The Demonologist Daughters,is sort of a takeoff of the real life work of Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are the couple
(44:13):
that are the basis of the Conjuring series of films, except rather than basing it on kindof the fantasy version in the Conjuring films, it's based on the actual family.
They were very involved in paranormal investigations in the 1970s and 80s.
starting in 2012, 2011, 2012, they started making these films based on the records oftheir quote cases that Lorraine Warren, the wife had created.
(44:40):
She had written these different books over the years.
Basically their stick was if there was any kind of paranormal event, that was amanifestation of demonic activity.
And so they would rush in, whether it was the Amityville horror or, you know, somethinglike the infield poltergeist taunting or whatever, they would come in, they would do their
paranormal investigation and they would perform an exorcism of some point.
(45:05):
They have a daughter named Judy and Judy and her husband, Tony Sparrow so far have beenvery content to try to keep the legacy of her parents going.
And it's pretty lucrative legacy now with the films and all of that and the attentionthat's been newly drawn to them.
So since her mother has died, they've been very focused on that.
I was looking at their story as part of my nonfiction research and I was kind of lookingfor my next fiction topic because I had written some fiction things before.
(45:33):
And I just sort of started asking myself this question.
Okay.
Judy Warren seems very comfortable with her parents' legacy.
What would happen if you had more than one daughter and
Most of those daughters were not happy with the family legacy.
They were trying to escape it and they did successfully.
But then something happens that brings them all back.
(45:54):
What kind of scars would you carry?
What would you have to deal with in returning to that environment?
Just like Daniela was saying earlier, what kind of existential fears would you carrythroughout your life because of the way that you had been raised?
And so I kind of got this idea of the conjuring meets little women, the story of fourdaughters.
that are enmeshed in this spiritual warfare culture.
(46:16):
I won't spoil a whole lot, but two of them escape it.
One stays.
It's not a big spoiler to say one of them dies early on, and that's part of the mystery atthe heart of the story.
And so it's basically about bringing them back.
And the way I tell the story is in a series of quartets where you have two chapters set inthe present and then a third chapter set 27 years before in 1995, where you see them as
(46:42):
kids.
And you get to actually experience the world that they grew up in and understand thedifficulties they faced.
And then the fourth chapter in each quartet is taken from one of their mom's books, whichhas been used to promote the parents ministry.
And you basically get her version of the flashback chapter in chapter three.
(47:03):
And so you get to see how she has tweaked it both to popularize their ministry.
And also to kind of deal with the painful realities there.
She has really changed the story in various ways so that she can both comfort herself andshe could portray it as nobler than it actually was.
And I'll just say the book is fantastic.
(47:24):
I haven't finished it yet, but it is in my Kindle and I'm working my way through it,Scott.
And in fact, as soon as you announced it, I like to believe that I was among the first tohave purchased it.
But I have yet to finish it.
So I'll get there.
uh
appreciate you dive again.
(47:45):
I mean, I'm very intrigued.
I'm definitely gonna read it.
I'm putting together my book club list too for the upcoming year.
So maybe I need to look at that because one of the things that I've been saying recentlyis that, so cult experts have said many times that all cults are the same, Like coercive
control is kind of the same.
(48:06):
It doesn't really matter what flavor it is.
And one of the things I think that I'm doing is like,
Helping to create the language for the cult baby experience Right, like things like you'rein this world, but you're not of this world things like Having your childhood sacrificed
(48:28):
for a mission You know and just like these things that it doesn't matter whether you werein Scientology a Mormon UPCI You know recognize cult like me or
any of these, like we have these shared experiences from the perspective of the childrenbeing brought along into these beliefs that become like so big and take over their world.
(48:57):
So true.
Yeah.
One of the themes in the book involves the parents going away to these exorcism sessions,deliberate sessions for like days and days on end.
They don't know when they're going to come back.
And the oldest daughter at the age of 12 ends up having to take care of all the rest.
And that sort of becomes their life with their parents being very absent.
And every time something comes up that the parents can't do for the kids because of that.
(49:22):
The mom's phrase over and over again is, you've got to be good little soldiers for Jesus.
You're part of the Lord's army.
And so, you know, it's like a military campaign and you've got to take the hardships ofthe sacrifices.
Scott, in your estimation, uh we've talked a little bit about education and beyond that,or maybe that is the answer, right?
(49:46):
For folks that, like me, who grew up in this kind of culture and context, sort of beingable to take a step back from that and seeing it for what it is, because I think of, you
you mentioned the conjuring, and I've already seen that, you know, Mark Driscoll,
a mega church pastor is out there talking about all of these movies and saying, you know,that society is, is fascinated with Satan and the work of Satan and, you know, drumming
(50:15):
up, beating this drama of satanic panic again, because, know, it's for a different reasonthan what you mentioned earlier, but I mean, it's, it's lucrative, right?
It, it, it gets, it gets butts in the seats and it gets money in, in, in, in the offeringplate.
So, you know, how do we teach people, how do we lead people, how do we engage with folksto escape that kind of uh regressive thinking, right?
(50:46):
Where you take all of the world's problems and you say, well, it's Satan's fault.
Yeah, and that is the million dollar question today, not just in this realm, but acrossthe board right now dealing with misinformation.
It is so challenging.
One of the interesting things about looking at the late 80s and the beginning of thecrumbling of a lot of this, a lot of the challenges to claims like Mike Warnke's, there
(51:11):
was Lauren Stratford, was claiming to be survivor of satanic ritual abuse.
They came from within the church, from within evangelicalism.
You had some people who were
relatively conservative on the spectrum who were challenging these things and saying theydon't give the church a good look.
And at least in evangelical quarters, that was sort of the beginning of the end, but itwas a long, painful process.
(51:34):
It helps to have insiders to do that.
I think about those people.
I think about John Winthrop Jr.
in Connecticut, the son of the more famous John Winthrop.
He really helped to break the back of the witch trials there.
in the 1650s and 1660s because he just, even though he was a very devout believer, he hada lot of questions about the default assumptions regarding witchcraft trials.
(51:59):
And so he challenged that and began to bring it into it.
It helps to have people who can be seen as an authority figure or someone they respect toengage with those cultures.
Problem we've got right now is that we are so polarized that almost anyone who presents acontrary opinion.
His label is a minion of Satan.
(52:19):
I, it's almost hard to be an insider.
Can anyone truly be?
It almost reminds me of studying the French revolution.
And you've got someone like Robespierre who says he's the incorruptible saying, I definewho is a true son or daughter of the revolution.
And that is something, is somewhat what we have here at American society today, where it'shelpful for people within the various traditions.
(52:43):
to engage with these ideas and to be as tireless as they can be.
It was exhausting to continue pushing back against what seems like absolute intransigence,telling these stories, recounting the history, continuing to engage in the kind of spaces
that we were talking about earlier, which is often very difficult, especially when you'vehad painful experiences with them in the past, but being on social media.
(53:10):
talking to your neighbors, like Daniela mentioned earlier, having that hard conversationwith your parents, which you may have to have a few of those that back off for a little
bit or with other family members.
It's that tension preserving the relationship, but at the same time, being honest andtruthful.
I talked to so many people that speak of their family experiences right now and they say,our relationship is so shallow.
(53:36):
Because the most important values we have, the most important things in our lives, wecan't talk about without getting into a fight, but just continuing to share those things
persistently and graciously, uh, speaking the truth and love, sharing facts, sharingreality in as gracious of a way as we can manage while still being forceful enough to not
(53:58):
get run over, uh, forceful enough to be willing to take it to those who are, seem to haveno problem.
distorting reality.
And you know, that's I've watched this phenomenon even with Daniela, right?
So, so Daniela, I can't see.
I don't you did have blue hair at one point.
You look is OK.
(54:19):
So all right.
So so blue haired knitting cult lady, Daniela is getting flack from the left, right?
From from people on the left.
And and I watch this phenomenon with her.
And you're right.
The polarization.
puts people that are willing to tell the truth, case in point with Daniela, uh at oddswith who you would think would be her fiercest allies, right?
(54:49):
And Daniela, you can talk to that experience a little
Yeah, mean, you know, I will even say with being a woman veteran, like I was presentedwith this very binary choice when I was like, I want to start telling my stories and
people were like, okay, so which one are you?
Are you disgruntled or are you a proud veteran?
(55:10):
You know, and I had to go on this whole journey myself to eventually come back and belike, it's all of them, right?
Like it's...
My story of being one of the first women to go out on these combat teams is as importantas the fact that I was pulled aside and told to watch my back against these same American
soldiers, right?
(55:31):
Like I, we can hold nuance.
We can have non-complicated stories.
You know, when I first started saying I was going to talk about the cult and the army,people would say, oh, well, the cult, like that's obviously, obviously evil.
Right.
Which I still didn't agree with.
Nothing's ever obviously evil in the place where it comes from.
(55:54):
And then but I was in this very like pro veteran community.
And then people would say, but the U.S.
Army, that's a wonderful organization.
You know, and I finally started stopping and being like, let's let's, you know, hold on.
Right.
The U.S.
Army is one point three million humans trained to kill people as efficiently as possible.
(56:16):
Hmm.
know, we work hard in the modern army to be as professional and as humane and asleadership sort of focused as we can.
But neither of these organizations are either obviously good and obviously bad.
And this is actually I wrote a whole book.
I've done like a five year project on this because people try to put me in these boxes.
(56:40):
And the book that I just finished last week that comes out January 20th, I am showinglike, here's my 10 things that make you a cult, right?
And I'm gonna show them to you in the most serious cults.
And then also, here they are in our military and here they are in our regularorganizations.
(57:01):
And then, I think the thing that really unsettles people about me is then I just don'tcomfort you after that.
Yeah, the military is a cult.
We've just chosen to have 1 % of our population in a cult.
because we say we need it and we don't really want to like investigate that any further.
So we just stop there and actually just telling people like, no, look, this thing thatthis cult does, this tactic, here it is here, you know, and just letting them see that.
(57:36):
And I don't, you know, we're not gonna answer it.
We're never gonna get a definition of cult that everyone agrees on.
Just like we're never gonna get a definition of good and bad.
And quite frankly, the world doesn't come like that.
So people will say to me all the time, they'll be like, well, I don't agree witheverything you said, but I like this thing.
And I'm always like, if you agreed with everything I said, I would be a little concernedfor you.
(58:01):
Like that would be a little bit culty.
even agree with everything that I say.
Like I have to come back and call myself out on stuff.
Well, that's so true.
mean, those patterns of thought shaping, sometimes thought control, I they're so similaracross groups.
I mean, there's so many groups that would fit into that sort of cultic definition.
What are the interesting ironies to me about evangelical Christianity is the degree towhich they want you to take it seriously, but not necessarily too seriously.
(58:31):
Uh, one guy who was on Twitter at one point was responding to people who said, okay, youneed to support Trump if you're a Christian.
And this guy responded and said, okay, let me get this straight.
So you taught me not to drink, not to smoke, not to have sex before marriage and to be anabsolute outcast in high school.
And now you think I'm about to bow to peer pressure.
(58:53):
It was that irony that, mean, questioning these things, questioning this corruption,questioning this brutality and cruelty.
That's who you taught me to be.
But so many people are looking at their parents and say,
This person that you're supporting is the exact opposite of everything you ever taught meto be.
And it's amazing how the culture still blows back against that and says, no, you're notone of us.
(59:18):
And the response often is a very fundamental way.
I bore you that you are because I haven't abandoned these principles.
I'm writing a musical and I'm putting this line in the musical that just says, aren't wethe fruits that you've been raising up so well?
oh You know, and we've kind of had this conversation a little bit as Children of Godsurvivors, like we grew up in such isolation that everything about me was made by the
(59:51):
Children of God.
And this is kind of, again, the funny part about these kind of cults or these closedthinking.
It's like, you know, they told me to go fight the system and that's what I'm doing.
Like they told me to, you know, to like not take things that were being presented by theworld and yet they're upset when you then turn around and see like, hey, what about this
(01:00:15):
definition?
But yeah, it's even been so interesting to me how like,
people want to force me to be a leader and to give them guidance.
And they're very uncomfortable with me just being like, nope, here's the facts.
Like right now I'm the only call expert that I know of that has military experience andI'm just gonna line these two up and leave them here for you.
(01:00:42):
And I'm just gonna talk about the history of blondness and white supremacy.
And then people come back and be like, oh, so is it not okay?
uh
And I'm like, no, I'm not your morality police.
I'm not your leader.
I'm not your pastor.
there's no simple answer.
Think about these things.
I just got to teach you my spring semester course on contemporary world civilizations.
(01:01:05):
And I always enjoy pointing out the fact that the major proponent in Germany of the 1930sand 1940s of blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Aryan German supremacy was a short, stumpy,
black-haired Austrian who's proclaiming this.
I mean, just to go back to the amazing dynamics of cultic belief, people are buying that.
(01:01:26):
As the short, stumpy, unappealing guy who looks nothing like the ideal he's selling, it'sconvincing people this is the human ideal.
It's just amazing.
uh Kinda sounds like Trump calling Taylor Swift unattractive.
ha
Are questioning the musical ability of Bruce Sprakestein?
Seriously?
right.
All right.
(01:01:46):
All right.
Best thing I heard recently was like Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen need to throw afree concert in D.C.
on the day of the parade.
I was like,
That would be great.
Hey, Scott, thanks so much for being here.
If folks want to buy your book, which I encourage, if they want to follow up with you, ifthey'd like to get you to come speak to their group or their organization, what's the best
(01:02:09):
way to get in touch with you?
My website is kscotcoalpepper.com and that's got links to all those things like purchaselinks for the book.
It's got a link to my newsletter and it's also got links for speaking engagements and Iwould love to come share with people.
The book is available through Amazon, through Barnes and Noble and pretty much any onlineoutlet.
(01:02:30):
It's available through Lightning Spark, which services all the online bookstores and allof that.
So you can get it through any of those outlets and in two weeks you will be able to getit.
through Audible, uh iTunes, and Amazon Music in audiobook format.
Yeah, and tell us about the, you had an actress that is involved with this project, right?
(01:02:52):
Yes, she's an audio book producer from Georgia.
Her name is Haley Henderson.
She is magnificent.
I just did an interview with her earlier today, uh, to create some videos we couldrelease, on the eve of the actual release date.
was great.
She was fantastic.
She just infused it with so much emotion and she's got a background in, uh, sort ofstudying art and theology.
(01:03:16):
So she got the character, she got the story, she could do the
nuances of academic conversation that came up every once in a while, it was great.
So I'm really excited about that coming out.
Well, congratulations, Scott, and much success to all of your endeavors.
I'm proud of you, my friend, and thrilled that we had the opportunity to reconnect on thisepisode.
(01:03:40):
Thank you so much, Scott.
Appreciate you both and the important work that you're doing.
Thanks so much for sharing your wisdom with us.
Thank you.
until next time, I'm Scott Lloyd for Daniela Mistenek Young,
And we'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of America.
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