At the end of dinner Wednesday night, we flipped on the TV and caught a promo for the 7:00 p.m. Dateline NBC with Stone Phillips. The theme was “Dealing with the Devil” (or something close to that) and the teaser promised a birds eye view of a real live “exorcism,” and a second piece featuring “religious serpent handlers.” I mused aloud to Jan, “I wonder how they’re going to portray the ‘religious people’ in the story, and I also wonder why they chose this story at this time.” (Anything to do with what’s going on with the filibuster deal right now?) I’ve always liked Stone Phillips, as I think he has amazing hair, he dresses well, and he brings an impressive level of professionalism to the show. So, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Regrettably. “Why regrettably,” you ask? Bluntly, because the show blatantly caricatured “evangelical Christians” as weirdos.
In the first story, a relatively normal looking 60–something guy from somewhere in the south, was identified as being under the influence of demons. Meet a former Baptist pastor who specializes in exorcisms after years of pastoring. He’s not only convinced that there is at least one demon in the guy, but he agrees to let the Dateline cameras film the exorcism process. That struck me as odd. I’ve had experience (though limited) with people under demonic influence, and among the last things in the world I would have welcomed as I dealt with them would have been a TV camera and crew. Anyway, the former pastor seemed fairly normal until he started talking about what he was going to do, and how sure he was about what was going on. There were four other people on the “team” – two women who sat right next to the guy on either side who kept touching him (I’m sure they would justify it as “laying hands on him” in prayer), and incidentally when the guy eventually left, he looked at one of the women and warmly said, “Thanks, especially to you.” That made me very uncomfortable and raised all kinds of red flags. There were also two other men in addition to the main exorcist, both pastors, and one of them, the “possessed” guy’s pastor. Their labored and lengthy process of casting out demons took four hours in the morning session, they took a “lunch break”(?) and returned in the afternoon for at least two or three more hours. The guy made odd sounds and facial contortions, he smirked at times, at one point the team thought Satan himself was manifesting in the guy, and finally, he started vomiting up what the team was quite sure, was the demon(s).
The guy was supposedly delivered, however, in a later interview, he indicated he had experienced a “little problem” with another spirit some time later. He was eventually shown as living the life he always wanted to live as he strolled along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean somewhere in the south.
Why was I thinking “tactical maneuver?” Because the reporter included statements like: “These are evangelical fundamentalists.” “They take the Bible literally.” “They believe in a literal devil.” Nobody came right out and said it, but what screamed at me from the TV was, “These are the kind of right-wingers we’re talking about living out there in the red states!”
Then the second story came on. It was even worse. They featured backwoods, rural fundamentalists with bad teeth (or no teeth), antiquated clothing, hillbilly music, Bible-beating pulpit-pounding sermons, and wacko “snake handling.” They showed these people handling rattlesnakes and other poisonous breeds by the handful. They showed several who had been bitten by snakes, in one case, a man who had been bitten 118 times and survived. They showed a younger pregnant woman freely handling the snakes and saying, “If God tells me to handle a snake, I’m handling it!” They documented a case against one of the snake handlers who forced his wife to handle a snake, and when she did she was bitten and nearly died. He’s in prison for his abuse of his wife. They also showed some men who had handled the snakes and died. They showed grotesque pictures of snake handlers with swollen arms and faces from recent snake bites. They also showed some drinking strychnine, though later, they clarified that after testing the liquid, it didn’t have enough poison in it to kill a person.
Of course, it was necessary to point out that these were “religious fundamentalists,” that they “took the Bible literally,” that they did what they were doing because “God was telling them to do it,” and the piece de resistance, they quoted the Bible verse in Mark 16:18 – “They will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all;” Most informed scholars know this is a disputed text and many ancient manuscripts don’t include this portion in Mark’s Gospel. But, even if we accept it as legitimate, I don’t know of anyone but a few tiny sects in remote places who take this as a recommendation to apply it literally.
By the end of the show, I was trying to decide if I had just observed “news,” or “a tactical maneuver.” Both reports made the following assertions or intimations: 1) These are evangelical religious fundamentalists. 2) They believe in a literal devil who possesses people. 3) They take the Bible literally. 4) They are not normal. 5) They are scary people. The people they showed even scared me, to be honest.
Evangelical Christians, we have a huge “PR” challenge. (Using the designation, “PR,” may seem crass, but I’m referring to our damaged image in the current cultural climate.) I invite you to consider that one of our greatest challenges is to live out our faith in a culture that is increasingly marginalizing and de-constructing who we are and what we really want. They can’t imagine that evangelicals might be educated, thoughtful, reasonable, fair-minded, intelligent,or even capable of meaningful philosophical engagement. “Want to spend an evening chatting with an evangelical over dinner?” “No thanks, I’d rather have a root canal!”
I’m not suggesting that we need to arrogantly recite our credentials. But somehow, we need to engage with our culture in winsome (not compromising the truth) ways that helps them look beyond the extremist images that are driving them away. If I wasn’t a Christian, and I observed what I did in the two segments on Dateline tonight, there was nothing that would compel me to pursue Christianity. Quite the opposite, I would run as fast as I could in the other direction.
