Fantasyland, Part 5 - Satanic Panic

The Desert Fathers do talk about the devil and demons. Demons act as tempters, as opponents in spiritual warfare. As with much of Orthodox Christianity, literalism is not favored stance. On the other hand, Kurt Andersen writes:

The Satanic Panic never took off outside the United States. A historian in Norway found that until Rivera's 1988 NBC special was covered in the Norwegian press, there had been no public reference to satanic ritual abuse... And in no other developed country, of course, are so many citizens evangelical or fundamentalist Christians. America is exceptional. 

 Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 5000 Year History (2017; Random House, 2018); Chapter 37: The Inmates Running the Asylum Decide Monsters are Everywhere; pp. 338-39

And  because we do have such a large number of angry, conservative Christians both Robert Heinlein and Margaret Atwood conceived theocracies taking over the Untied States. No one could foresee conservative Christians doing anything so jesuitical as putting Donald J. Trump into political office.

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3/17/20