The Synoptic Gospels are full of stories in which Jesus casts out demons. In Mark’s gospel, healing and exorcism are Jesus’ main activities. In the early church, exorcism was part of the pre-baptismal ritual. Throughout much of the world today, exorcism is a common part of Christian practice. Even in the United Methodist Church, our baptismal liturgy includes the question, “Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness?” Yet in much of western Christianity, we tend to avoid any serious discourse on the subject of the demonic. If it does come up, we often talk about it as pre-modern myth made obsolete by modern science and medicine. Does this approach represent an intellectual and spiritual advance, or have we lost something important in the way in which we think and talk about evil?
Despite the fact that we avoid these topics in our churches, popular culture is rife with television shows, websites, and books devoted to the “paranormal.” It seems people are genuinely interested in these types of phenomena, and even open to affirming them as veridical. Why is it that the popular culture seems more open to the reality of spiritual phenomena than many of our churches are?
I’m particularly curious to know what, you, gentle readers, think about this matter. I’d appreciate your commenting below. Please, if you would, leave any comments here rather than on my Facebook page, so that all comments are available to all readers.
And let’s keep it civil, friends.
David F. Watson 
Hey DW,
I read an article by Carl Braaten in which he discusses the lack of eschatological conversation in the Western church. I think your question aligns with his statement. Without a working eschatology we look at the world on a one dimensional level. We are incapable of seeing the principalities and powers at work; this also keeps us from from having a proper redemptive vision that drives our actions.
What do you think? Does eschatology and demonic force go hand in hand?
Hi, Meshach. Thanks for chiming in. I like the link between eschatology and the demonic. Then again, many churches don't talk about eschatology, either. I think you can have eschatology without the demonic, but traditionally these concepts have been intertwined.
Thank you David for this prophetic post. A few random comments.
Not only is there a genuine interest in the paranormal within popular culture, there is an increase in the practice of the paranormal and the occult. Dabblers and practitioners are experiencing that the demonic, though they do not call it that, is real, and they believe they are drawing some benefit from it. As a pastor in the UMC for 20+ years, I often discovered that deceived parishoners supplemented their spirituality with some form or practice of the occult and/or the paranormal.
The problem is that our denomination, its churches, and its seminaries are steeped in modernism, offer no serious responses or interaction and have explained these phenomena and the scriptural accounts away. Scriptural references are dismissed as pre-critical/scientific, mythical, metaphorical, psychological etc. Mainline Protestants have no categories to understand or deal with the “invisible” (metaphysical or ontological invisibility) let alone the demonic.
Thus, we do not deal with the demonic in our ministries. Pastors have little or no resources or orientation to these realities. For example, many persons would come to our church with demonic issues, only to tell me that they attended some other UM church and left because that church was not able to help them.
Surely, not every sin, issue or problem is attributed directly to a devil, and there are those who err on that side. However, I do not feel that has been our error as UMs. We have gone to the other extreme. I do not have the space, time or the need “to prove” the existence of the invisible (invisible creation – spirit world, angels, demons) let alone the demonic.
As someone who has led hundreds of deliverance sessions and many exorcisms, I have witnessed the demonic firsthand, not only through spiritual discernment of the invisible but also the witnessing of physical manifestations, such as foaming mouths, growling, hissing, eyes rolling back to the whites, radical change in voice (voice over dubbing), voices identifying themselves as demons, levitation on one occasion, convulsions, and free floating swelling and bulging in various part of the body among other phenomena.
Forgive me for being graphic, but it is to illustrate that something real is going on when a demonic manifestation is detected in a person, but more important when these demons are opposed in the name of Jesus, the demons leave and these manifestations cease, and the person begins an amazing healing and recovery process. I have witnessed it countless times.
Deliverance/exorcism ministry is biblical, consonant with historical Christianity, and so needed in a day when the influence and variation of evil is on the rise. We need to minister in the authority and power that Christ has given to the church. The secular world knows it is real. The majority world or 2/3rds world knows it is real. Even in the ratio-empricial West, postmodernism is awakening to the reality of the invisible. We see this in the theological turn that French phenomenology has taken in which invisibility is a major focus of this movement. Some good work on transcendence and invisibility is coming out of Continental philosophy that can help inform and provide a philosophical framework for metaphysical invisibility. Check it out. Just a few thoughts.
Pete Bellini
Pete, thanks for these insights. You are one of the only UM academics willing to talk about this matter. I appreciate not only your sharing your experiences, but the intellectual resources you bring to the discussion.
What resources would Dr. Bellini suggest to get better oriented to these issues?