satanic worship

Nope, not my latest thing. Just an interesting post by the incomparable slactivist on the seemingly unending belief among the religious right that thousands, if not tens of thousands of children are being abducted and sacrificed or abused by satan worshipers. As he notes, no evidence exists to support those claims, but it has turned into a cottage industry for some.

"As with most urban legends, it's difficult to determine precise origins for many of these stories. But it certainly appears that some devout, Christian writers sat down and devised elaborate rituals involving group sex, dismemberment and the rape of infants. That these writers ran this material by the devout Christian editors at these publishing houses. And that these publishing houses packaged these claims, bound them attractively, and shipped them out to the local Mustard Seeds, Wellsprings and other devout Christian bookstores across the country."

Fred suggests that this has to do with evangelical anxiety:

"This anxiety arises in part from the never-quite-wholly conscious recognition that we Christians don't seem to be all that different from everybody else. We know we're supposed to be "a peculiar people," yet we seem to spend our time, our money and our lives pretty much the same way that everybody else around us does. We have the same things, we do the same things, we want the same things as those unsanctified others."

One of the commenters quoted Anne Lamott: ""You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."

These are traps that can ensnare all of us.