Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History

by Kurt Andersen

Just because some other Christian demonologists are “odd ducks,” I heard one Vineyard pastor say in a sermon on spiritual warfare, that doesn’t mean demons aren’t real. “We don’t believe you have to be an expert on Satan,” the Vineyard Church of Duluth explains in a guide called Dealing with the Demonic, “studying his ways obsessively, or looking for a demon behind every bush.” Right. Cool. However, “once you know that, in fact, this probably is demonic activity,” you proceed with the deliverance mission—“Pray in Jesus’s name because the demons hate it….If they do their part, demons will leave quietly and quickly in ten minutes, and that is how most deliverances that we do actually happen.” If the de-demonization isn’t quite so easy, there’s a Troubleshooting section. The problem may be that your demon-possessed friends are hearing a satanic voice in their heads saying, “ ‘This is a hoax, this is ridiculous, this stuff isn’t even real.’ ” According to Luhrmann, her Vineyarders in Chicago and Palo Alto “would find themselves kind of going into restaurants and smelling for the demons and then having to pray to expel them.” These, remember, are moderate, mainstream charismatics.