Seeing the unseen

Last fall I was reading the Bible with my son when we came across the account of the Garasene demoniac. This naturally led to questions about demons. I assured Sam they are real, but visible encounters with them in the U.S. are rare. In fact, most people here believe they don't exist.

I suggested Sam not bring up demons at school. I might as well have cautioned him against mentioning demons at church. Even those Christians who agree to belief in a devil will look askance at anyone who spends time talking about him. Bring up demon possession and you will certainly get some strange looks.

Americans enjoy a good demon possession movie; a new one with a Jewish exorcist is due out soon [1]. But despite wide-spread belief in God, we generally don’t believe in demons. It’s hard to be critical of this, given that most of us have had no direct experience to support their existence. We are children of the Enlightenment, and (with 19^th-century Biblical scholars like Rudolf Bultmann) we tend not to believe what we don’t see.

A recent paper by Craig Keener [2] turns this logic on its head. In it, Keener surveys anthropological data concerning modern spirit possession phenomena. Anthropologists have spent a good deal of time studying possession, because it is wide-spread. In the words of an anthropologist quoted in the article, to deny demon possession as a phenomenon is the “anthropological equivalent of ‘being a flat-earther’”. It's widely enough attested in ethnographies that of 488 societies surveyed by specialist Erika Bourguignon, 74% had spirit-possession beliefs. While it is not commonly found in the West, it is found in “a wide variety of societies in most regions of the world, among them Africa…, the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas” [3]. Furthermore, in those societies it is not necessarily reserved for the lunatic fringe. For instance, Keener writes, “…in many African countries a third of Christians claim to have witnessed exorcisms, and in some that figure rises to roughly half (Uganda, Mozambique), 65 percent (Ghana), or 74 percent (Ethiopia)” [4]. Keener writes, “Generally when I have asked educated persons from Africa and many other parts of the Majority World whether they believed in the reality of spirits, occult activity, and the like, their response has been, ‘Of course,’ sometimes with the caveat that they are careful with whom they discuss such matters, especially among skeptical Westerners.” [5]

What do we mean by “spirit possession”? From the anthropologists’ perspective, it’s an altered state of consciousness which the local culture describes as due to control by an external spirit. In some cases ritual is used to bring it about, as in the Yoruba culture in Nigeria, where a ceremony with drums is used to induce a trance state, allowing the shaman to heal, curse, predict the future, etc. Not all who experience what might be labeled possession seek it for their own ends, however. Dennis McCallum, for instance, related the following experience:

When I was preaching at a village church in India, an elderly woman suddenly began to cry out and gesticulate in an unnatural way. I asked my translator what she was saying, and he translated, “I am more powerful than any of you! She has been mine for thirty-five years! There is nothing you can do!” Four men carried her out of the meeting to a nearby hut with a covered front porch where they prayed over her. Amazed, I asked if we shouldn’t stop and pray for her, but the other Christians made it clear they wanted me to continue with my teaching. They did not seem surprised by the experience. [6]

 In some cases it appears to be tied to a pattern of occult practice. The spectrum of possession practices and experiences is simply too broad to describe here. Importantly, modern possession includes phenomena similar to those found in the New Testament.

Anthropologists themselves have historically sought to sympathetically understand a culture while retaining scientific objectivity. In recent years, though, some have gone beyond this. As Keener writes,

One obvious example of this phenomenon is the noted anthropologist Edith Turner, who describes her gradual transformation from skeptical observer to convinced observer and finally participant, now rejecting her former stance as cultural imperialism. In 1980, she and her husband, Victor Turner, were leading some students at New York University in some rituals addressed to Yoruba deities, with drumming and songs; right there a street theater director went into a trance and made accurate predictions afterward. The Turners had not expected the ritual to function this way outside its original context. [7]

Turner has written extensively since on the reality of spirits. While they are by far in the minority, Keener gives other examples as well of academics thus persuaded. Since Westerners generally do not believe in the reality of spirit possession, it is noteworthy that a even small number of those academics who make a living studying it have become convinced of its reality.

A mediæval illustration of Jesus 
healing the Gerasene demonaic

Even Christians who accept belief in spiritual beings may be wary of mistaking supernatural affliction for personality disorders, and the damage which a misdiagnosis could cause. Indeed, some cases which are described as possession may not be the result of psychosis, but rather heightened suggestibility due to cultural pressure and inculcation. But the weight of data forbids us from dismissing out of hand demon possession as a real phenomenon, especially given the Biblical witness. The data beg the question, though: If demon possession is real, why isn’t it found in the West? Its societal correlates suggest some possible answers. Quoting Keener again,

Increase in occurrences of possession often accompany dramatic changes in society. Even in the nineteenth century, observers noted that ‘cases of possession are less frequent in peaceful times, and more frequent in times of civil commotion; also less frequent in prosperous families’ and ‘among educated people.’ Possession without a trance is more common in hunter-gatherer societies; increasing societal stratification and complexity increases the likelihood of added trance states…Including ecstatic Christian experiences in her analysis, Bourguignon suggests that possession trance is most common among the more marginalized members of a society; groups that once experienced it, such as early Methodists, that have now become respectable are far less likely to display it. It often appears among those marginalized from other means of power in their society, especially women, although this pattern varies from one society to another. [8]

Since possession gives power to the powerless, albeit at a price, it’s not surprising it’s found globally more among those lacking power, and in unstable societies. The West, being more stable and powerful, would tend not to attract this sort of phenomenon. Westerners, with their post-Enlightenment culture, are also less likely to become involved in cult activity, with its ties to spirit possession. Many have also wondered if it might represent a larger demonic strategy, in which supernatural demonic aggression in the West is deliberately covert to encourage materialistic and atheistic religious-philosophical beliefs [9].

Let’s say, then, that some fraction of spirit possession phenomena represent actual demon possession. What are the implications? Keener quotes the famous Chinese writer Watchman Nee, saying “one Chinese church leader of a previous generation reproved Western critics with the observation that their theological hairsplitting would benefit them little in his country ‘if when the need arose you could not cast out a demon.’” [10] Still, a Westerner might be justified in regarding this as irrelevant if it doesn’t happen in his or her own back yard [11]. McCallum argues that the relative lack of guidance on exorcism in the epistles indicates that it is not intended to play a central role in the lives of believers. It’s one thing to have a fire extinguisher on hand and in working order; it’s another to use it every time you see a light.

One day when Sam is much older, I will tell him about these data. What would it look like for him to take seriously the biblical view that the earth is populated not just by humans, but also by a species of spiritual creatures which, while generally invisible, can exert influence on the physical world? There probably won't be much assistance for him from the pulpit--when was the last time you heard a sermon on spiritual warfare, or heard a prayer in a church service aimed at resisting the enemy? [12] He may not feel the need to bone up on exorcism techniques [13], but given the data described by Keener on spiritual activity we surely can't blame him for feeling some curiosity about Satan's covert (i.e. non-possession) tactics [14]. If the prevailing attitude in the West remains the same, he may be one of the few in his church who does.

* * *

[1] The Possession (2012).

[2] “Spirit Possession as a Cross-cultural Experience”, from the Bulletin for Biblical Research (20, 215; 2010). This work is expanded upon in an appendix of Miracles, Vol. 2 (Baker Academic, 2011).

[3] Miracles, 792.

[4] Miracles, 813.

[5] Miracles, 837.

[6] Satan and his Kingdom (Bethany, 2009), 197.

[7] Miracles, 830.

[8] Miracles, 824-25.

[9] E.g. McCallum, ibid., 185. A further theory is that overt spiritual attack only occurs on the missions front.  Keener notes a similar correlation.

[10] Miracles, 835.

[11] Note, however, this article in the Utne Reader describing a recent increase in interest in exorcism in the Catholic Church.

[12] We currently attend a Christian Reformed church. In the Episcopal, American Baptist and Evangelical Free churches I have attended I can’t recall even one sermon on this topic. Certainly other churches don’t have this blind spot.

[13] Though if you need to, see McCallum, ibid., ch. 17, or Spiritual Gifts in the Local Church (Bethany House, 1987), 198ff, by Anglican bishop David Pytches, both of which offer considerably more information than the single page in the Episcopal Book of Occasional Services, 2003, which simply directs those in need to visit the local bishop. (We can only hope the bishop has more in hand than The Book of Occasional Services.)

[14] This is too large a topic to address here, though a good place to start is Ephesians 6. A more thorough exposition of the topic is the subject of McCallum's book.

The first image is a detail from Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights.