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Overwhelmed with requests for exorcism practitioners, U.S. Roman Catholic bishops recently held a special training workshop in Baltimore to teach the rite. The church signed up 56 bishops and 66 priests for the two-day session, aiming to boost the small group of just five or six American exorcists currently on the church’s books.

“There’s this small group of priests who say they get requests from all over the continental U.S.,” Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, stated. Concerning exorcists, he added that “actually, each diocese should have its own.”

Neal Lozano, a Catholic writer, reports that he knows an exorcist in the church who receives about 400 inquiries a year about performing an exorcism. Out of this number, the exorcist determines that only two or three cases require an exorcism.

Although the procedure is not performed frequently, the question that should immediately occur to most freethinkers is why, in an era of relative scientific sophistication, this ritual is ever done and what is the church’s motivation for encouraging interest in this ritual that logic says should have been abandoned centuries ago. Before we tackle these questions, general information about exorcism will be helpful.

The religious concept that explains the alleged need for exorcism is a belief in demonic possession, a situation where a demon can inhabit the human body and produce abnormal behavior or abnormal medical findings. This belief in demonic possession is older than Christianity itself. Christianity simply co-opted the idea from other cultures and religions, as they did with many of their other beliefs. The term “exorcism” became prominent in early Christianity from the early second century onward.

In Christian belief, angels were created good. Since they were endowed with free will, some of them rebelled against God, were banished from heaven, and became demons. The leader of the demons was Satan.

Jesus commanded his followers to expel “evil spirits” in his name. The New Testament contains several examples of Jesus casting out evil spirits from people, and the church notes these acts in the Catholic Catechism.

In pre-scientific Christianity, the church taught that disease was punishment from God for sins or was caused by demonic possession. In this discussion, the focus is on demonic possession. In its current usage, exorcism is mainly reserved for certain aberrant mental behavior.

The organizers of the training workshop in Baltimore were keenly aware of the potential for ridicule since many Americans view exorcism with skepticism. Exorcists in the U.S. keep a very low profile.  In 1999, the church updated the Rite of Exorcism and cautioned that “all must be done to avoid the perception that exorcism is magic or superstition.”

Exorcisms, according to the Canon law of the church, can only be performed by an ordained priest (or higher prelate), with the express permission of the local bishop. In addition, a careful medical examination to exclude the possibility of mental illness is required.

An exorcism is much less dramatic than what is presented in movies. It is done in private and includes sprinkling holy water, reciting Psalms, reading aloud from the Gospel, laying on of hands, and reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Some additional measures are allowed for different circumstances such as invoking the Holy Spirit followed by blowing in the face of the subject, tracing the sign of the cross on the person’s forehead, and commanding the demon to leave.

Some of the classic signs of demon possession, according to Bishop Paprocki, are speaking in a language the person has never learned, extraordinary shows of strength, a sudden aversion to spiritual things like holy water or the name of God, severe sleeplessness, lack of appetite, and cutting, scratching, and biting the skin.

For a person to accept the efficacy of exorcism, it is necessary to believe in demons. How common is this belief in the general population? According to an August 2007 Pew poll, the figure is, astoundingly, 68 %.

Demonic possession, of course, is not a valid psychiatric or medical diagnosis recognized by the standard diagnostic reference books in psychiatry and medicine, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) for psychiatry and the International Classification of Disease (ICD-10) for medicine. The signs that the church lists as evidence of demonic possession can be found in a wide variety of psychiatric and medical conditions.

There are multiple possible explanations for the increased interest in exorcism by the hierarchy of the church and its members:

• Interest has been whetted by Hollywood. Exorcism has been a staple of fright films, most notably the 1973 film The Exorcist.
• Reports of successful procedures on famous people tend to give them credence. For example, Mother Teresa allegedly underwent an exorcism late in life when the archbishop of Calcutta, Henry D’Souza, noted that she showed extreme agitation in her sleep. He feared she “might be under the attack of the evil one.”
• Reverend Richard Vega, president of the National Federation of Priests’ Councils, an organization for American priests, said that there could be a rising demand for exorcism because of the influx of Hispanic and African Catholics to the U.S. He noted that people from those cultures were more attuned to the supernatural.
• Another reason for increased interest in exorcism could be Pope Benedict XVI’s call for a return to traditional rituals and practices.
• But the really fundamental reason behind it all is stated unambiguously well by R. Scott Appleby, professor of American Catholic history at the University of Notre Dame. He is a longtime observer of the bishops. In referring to the recent training program in Baltimore, he stated: “What they’re trying to do in restoring exorcisms is to strengthen and enhance what seems to be lost in the church, which is the sense that the church is not like any other institution. It is supernatural, and the key players in that are the hierarchy and the priests who can be given the faculties of exorcism. It’s a strategy for saying we are not the Federal Reserve, and we are not the World Council of Churches. We deal with angels and demons.”

There you have it. A profound Wizard of Oz moment by a prominent Catholic theologian. The curtain was pulled back and the all-powerful Oz was revealed as just a fallible human being without any supernatural powers. Professor Appleby reveals the fundamental flaw of Catholicism and all other religions that depend on belief in a supernatural realm. Without the alleged magical powers that they can tap into by this belief, they would just be another secular institution.

There is a complete lack of any scientific evidence that a supernatural realm inhabited by fanciful and titillating entities such as gods, goddesses, angels, devils, and demons exists. But this naïve and mythological belief is enhanced and perpetuated by a gullible public.

So exorcism, an isolated belief in the supernatural, provides important lessons for freethinkers in how to accelerate the presently slow trend toward a secular world. Every time we encounter a specific supernatural claim, it must be promptly answered with a rational scientific explanation. This applies particularly to scientists, who by their detached attitudes have allowed supernatural claims to flourish. And as for an overly credulous public, the long term answer is increased levels of education, particularly in science and especially scientific (critical) thinking. Only by these measures will be able to pull back the curtain on the charlatan behind it.

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Demolishing the wall between church and state in order to establish a Christian theocracy is the ultimate goal of the Christian Right. Since they believe their version of Christianity is infallible and the only true means of salvation, they can’t understand why their religion shouldn’t be an integral part of our lives and our government as well. They believe they are doing us a favor by saving our souls and think by Christianizing the world they are preparing it for Christ’s Second Coming.

To tear down the wall, fundamentalist Christians flagrantly twist facts. They claim our first presidents, as well as most of our other founders, were Christians, that the essential documents our country was founded on incorporated Christian precepts, and that the founders didn’t really intend to establish a strict separation between Christianity and the government.

I’ll review specific evidence to help refute these claims.

The religious beliefs of the first four United States presidents (George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) is a good starting point since these remarkably talented men provided crucial leadership in the creation of our particular form of government.

All were strongly influenced by the European Enlightenment, a movement that promoted scientific thinking and religious tolerance. Most of the members of the Enlightenment were Deists, a minimalist religion that promoted the idea of a non-anthropomorphic god, a vague idea of a first cause or a god of nature. Deists thought this pseudo-god created the Universe and then retired to allow it to operate naturally. They did not believe in miracles or any humans, such as Jesus Christ, possessing divine powers. Many historians have classified these presidents as Deists.

The first four presidents were highly intelligent and comprehensively well educated, (Washington had less formal education than the other three) – including the classics and scientific knowledge of the time. They were men of exemplary character. All these attributes eminently qualified them to create a government structure that has endured and been a model for the rest of the world. (I feel a bit depressed when I compare these giants against some of our recent presidents, and I believe we should start critically reviewing what has gone wrong with the selection process).

Although the first four presidents did not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ and had serious misgivings about much of religion in general, they were tolerant and friendly in their dealings with religious figures. They all believed in complete religious freedom for everyone and stressed that this freedom was only possible when the government remained entirely neutral toward religion.

1. George Washington (1732-1799), the first president of the United States (1789-1797), was the hardest to read of the early presidents concerning his religious beliefs. He realized how contentious the subject of religion was, especially in public office, and simply tried to keep his true feelings to himself.  It is understandable that some have regarded him as a Christian since he was a vestryman in the Episcopal Church, which he attended sporadically, less so as he became older.

This superficial appearance of Christianity is countered by considerable evidence:

• He never took communion, even though his wife Martha did, which required the family carriage to make a return trip to the church to pick her up. Most Christians took communion at some time;
• In his time, church attendance was often a social obligation rather than an indication of a person’s true beliefs;
• In Washington’s writings, he never referred to Jesus Christ;
• There is no evidence he expressed belief at any time in conventional Christian dogma;
• His father was a Deist;
• The Reverend Doctor James Abercrombie, rector of the church Washington attended with his wife, in reply to a question about Washington’s religion, said: “Sir, Washington was a Deist”;
• Thomas Jefferson noted in his private journal in February, 1800: “I know that Gouverneur Morris, who claimed to be in his secrets, and believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more in that system [Christianity] than he did.” (Gouverneur Morris was the principal drafter of the Constitution, a member of the Continental Congress, a senator from New York, a minister to France, and a freethinker);
• Reverend Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister, in an interview in 1831, stated concisely: “I have diligently perused every line that Washington ever gave to the public, and I do not find one expression in which he pledges himself as a believer in Christianity. I think anyone who will candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion that he was a Deist and nothing more.”

2. John Adams (1735-1826) was the first vice-president of the U.S. and the second president (1775-1801). He played a prominent role in the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence and then exerted strong leadership in persuading the Second Continental Congress to adopt it.

Although he seemed to enjoy going to the Unitarian Church and described himself as a “church going animal,” he was a Deist, and a weak one at that, as revealed in his voluminous and erudite (sprinkled with quotations in multiple languages) correspondence with Thomas Jefferson. Quotes from multiple sources attest to his religious beliefs:

• In a letter to his brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, in explaining why he rejected the ministry, Adams wrote: “The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistical good-nature never failed to terrify me exceedingly whenever I thought of preaching”;
• Views of Religion by Rufus K. Noyes records this statement: “When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it”;
• Adams made this observation in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: “I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved – the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced”;
• Another letter to Jefferson contained this statement: “There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel…. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating the divine authority of those books?”

3. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the third president of the United States (1801-1809) and author of the Declaration of Independence. He was probably our most brilliant president and a prototypical Renaissance man, with a prodigious array of talents and accomplishments.

Jefferson chose this epitaph for his tomb: “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and the father of the University of Virginia.” It is highly significant that he included the Virginia religious freedom statute and omitted his two terms as president. This statue clearly outlined the church-state separation concept and served as the model for the Constitution. His epitaph confirms how important he thought this separation was.

• In his religious beliefs he is usually classified as a Deist, but at times he sounds almost like an atheist. Of the four presidents, his views on religion are the most extensively documented. Here are a few quotes that express his beliefs, in his own words:
• In a letter to Ezra Stiles, Jefferson wrote: “I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know;”
• Writing in Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson observed: “Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth”;
• Jefferson, in replying to a letter of John Adams, stated: “If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation of that hypothesis is just, ‘that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it’ “;
• He wrote in a letter to Dr. Woods: “I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies”;
• Corresponding with John Adams, he noted: “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter”;
• Even Jefferson’s belief in God seems a bit shaky in this statement in a letter to Peter Carr: “Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god….”

4. James Madison (1751-1836), the fourth president of the United States (1809-1817), has often been called “the father of the constitution.” Also, more than any other person, he can be considered responsible for making the Bill of Rights part of the constitution. He helped draft the constitution of Virginia and insisted on its providing separation of church and state.

He was a Deist but without much depth of conviction. Here are a few quotes that reflect his attitude toward religion:

• In a letter to William Bradford, Jr., he observes: “Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects.”
• He notes in another letter to Bradford: “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize”;
• Addressing the Virginia General Assembly about religious assessments, he said: “Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution”;
• Writing in a letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, he explains: “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”

Clearly, our first four presidents were not Christians, and the god they believed in was consistent with a Deistic one. In fact, the Reverend Dr. Wilson, who was almost a contemporary of our early statesmen and presidents, and extensively researched their religions, stated that the founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents elected up to his time, not one had professed a belief in Christianity. The presidents that he was referring to were the four I have discussed plus, in order, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson.

Some fundamentalist Christians claim that our government is founded on the Declaration of Independence, and that this document proves the founders intent was to incorporate Christian principles because of the mention of God. Of course, this contention is nonsense. First, our nation is founded on the Constitution and not the Declaration of Independence. Second, the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, and written by Thomas Jefferson, does not contain any references to a Christian anthropomorphic god. I checked the document and found four references that could be construed as being to a Deist- type entity. One reference is to “Nature’s God,” another to “Creator,” still another to “Supreme Judge of the world,” and finally one to “Divine Providence.” Third, there is no mention of Christ or Christianity in the document.

Our Constitution is the document that defines the structure of our government, and its understanding is crucial to answering claims by fundamentalist Christians that our nation was founded as a Christian nation. James Madison, its chief architect as previously mentioned, keenly recognized the horrors that can ensue if religion insinuates itself into government and quite deliberately constructed an obviously secular document. Not once is there a mention of any type of deity, Christ, or Christianity. In fact, the only mention of religion is in Article 6, Section 3: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” This article clearly separates church and state.

Nonetheless, Article 6 of the Constitution was not strong enough to satisfy everyone and the First Amendment to the Constitution in the Bill of Rights further delineated church-state separation: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;….”

Thomas Jefferson spelled out the meaning of the First Amendment even more precisely in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association: “ Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”

And as an unambiguous statement of the non-religious nature of our government, Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli is unexcelled. This treaty was signed into law by President John Adams and reads: “As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion, ….”

At the time of the creation of the Constitution, the colonies were religiously diverse: Puritans, Quakers, Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, Baptists, Anglicans, and others. It can be fairly said that the colonies were predominately Christian. Nonetheless, even though some clergy vigorously, but unsuccessfully, pushed for the insertion of Christian references into the Constitution, most of them, and Americans in general, seemed to understand the concept that strict church-state separation meant greater religious freedom for all. The churches’ acceptance of the concept of strict separation stands in sharp contrast to the situation nowadays where there are unrelenting efforts by fundamentalist Christians to destroy the wall.

It is ironic that the Enlightenment in Europe degenerated into the excesses of the French Revolution but that its principles became established instead in our country. The Enlightenment strongly influenced the thinking leading to the American Revolutionary War and strongly influenced our leaders in setting up our secular republic. We can only speculate what form of government we would now have if our government had been formed at another time with less enlightened leaders.

The founders of our country clearly meant for there to be a wall between any religion, including any form of Christianity, and our government. To maintain this essential separation, our citizens and watchdog groups need to be constantly alert in resisting these incursions.

But to ultimately remove the assaults against the church-state wall, it is essential that another wall eventually come down, a metaphorical one that exists in the frontal lobes of the brains of fundamentalists. This wall, constructed with a material called faith, separates a rational area where truth is decided with logic and evidence from a dark, irrational region where any type of religious belief, no matter how illogical, can exist. Only when this wall is gone will fundamentalist Christians realize their beliefs are not infallible and should not be imposed on everyone.

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I attended church for years in multiple places. I asked many questions which were never answered. Indeed, it seemed that no one that I knew had ever asked themselves the questions that plagued me.

One day I was in Sunday School in a Methodist church which I had been attending for several months. The teacher was an optometrist in the area. The class members were all college graduates. So, it was a well educated group. The discussion on that Sunday was about God being in control of everything. I brought up the fact that it bothered me that there are millions of people in Africa, Asia, South America, and elsewhere in the world who are dying or barely surviving because of hunger and disease.

The teacher said in a concerned manner that it seemed like I was saying that God is unfair. (How could I do such a thing?) I told him that I was bringing up this problem in the hopes that there is a sensible reason that such an enormous amount of hunger and poverty exists even though God is in control. He asked me what my basis was for thinking these conditions actually existed. This question was as shocking to me as if he had asked me what made me think that cancer existed. After a pause I said, “From multiple sources: magazines, newspapers, televisions, even through church mission drives.”

Then, this worthy man of God turned to the other members of the class and said, “Have any of you folks seen proof that such conditions exist?” There was another long pause. Finally after what seemed like an hour, a lady said, “Yes, there are such conditions. I am a nurse and I have seen a lot of evidence of these conditions in my studies and my work.” No one else said anything. The class ended then without further comment and everybody left. I never heard anything more about it, neither from the teacher nor from the members of the class.

Even a massive disaster does not seem to tickle the brain cells of many Christians. When horrible tragedies happen which make rational people at least question whether there is a personal God protecting us, many true believers respond with neither pity nor doubt. I think some people simply don’t want to discuss the topic, either because of shyness or insecurity. Many, however, see no inconsistency between the tragic loss of thousands of innocent lives and their belief that God is in complete control.

When the AIDS epidemic was at its peak, one of the members of the same Sunday School class remarked to me that AIDS was God’s punishment for the victims’ sins. The horrible pain that victims of AIDS suffer aroused no sympathy in him. Neither did the fact there were many babies who were victims of this dreadful disease.

On another Sunday a woman announced in class that she could not understand why people felt so sorry for the Jews. She said, “After all, they killed Christ.” Except for me, no one responded to her idiotic comment.

This extreme callousness, if we think about it, is exactly what one would expect of true believers in a religion in which the culmination of all of history is Armaggeden, which will, in the minds of the faithful, result in the brutal murder of everyone on earth, except for the relatively few “chosen.” Afterword, those murdered, though dead, will be thrown into the pit of fire to suffer forever. Far from being saddened by their belief in such a bleak future for mankind, this stellar event in their eyes is looked forward to with joyous anticipation.

This brings to mind the title of the old Fifth Dimension song, “Sweet Blindness.” Many Christians will use any number of rationalizations to justify their false sense of security. Believers either deny the existence of unfairness in this world or rationalize it in a variety of different ways. “It is the wages of sin.” “It’s God’s will.” “God will make all things right in the end.” “She will be a better person because of it.” The believer can then go blithely on with his or her life undisturbed by the most horrific events. The faithful are also relieved, at least in their minds, from any responsibility to do anything to prevent otherwise preventable mass suffering. The belief that God is in control of all things at all times and that those who are chosen will enjoy eternal bliss in heaven compels the faithful to focus on the hereafter rather than on real life suffering that is occurring today and urgently needs attention.

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Early in my Junior year of high school, my mom decided to move back “home” to West Virginia. Well, it was still home for her, at least, but after a decade in Florida it was no longer home for me; I felt terribly out of place. I was a strange and lonely kid who read too much and thought too much, and was stuck in the most awkward time of my life. So, when an older cousin asked me to join her church youth group, I did, hoping to find a place to fit in.

I guess I did fit in, for a while. I developed a crush on one of the boys at church and everyone was just so nice. The other kids had all been saved and baptized and the whole congregation seemed so excited about it when a newly saved soul headed up the aisle to pledge their heart to Jeebus. I wanted everyone to like me, so I decided to do it too. That was a very pleasant time for a shy gal in need of approval. Everyone hugged me, smiled at me, told me what a wonderful child I was. A dream come true for one sorely lacking in self esteem!

A few weeks later I had my baptismal ceremony and it was actually quite an uplifting experience. I had that mystical ‘god’ feeling that you read about; I honestly thought I felt surrounded by god’s presence! (As it turns out, a short time later I found I got that same feeling at large rock concerts where the crowd is intensely emotional and focused on the performer.) Everyone continued to heap attention upon me for about the next week, until the next big thing came along – Revival!

If you’ve never been to a Baptist revival, it is truly something to behold. Guest preachers come from far away, having prepared their best, loudest, most intense fire-and-brimstone sermons. It can go on for several weeks, with different speeches throughout the week. (If you have a morbid curiosity and a high BS tolerance, you should try one sometime, if only for reference.) Our regular pastor was not an intense man, normally. He much preferred the “god is love” kind of sermon, and I suppose, so did his flock. When I attended, the morning service was fairly normal, and I suspected nothing. The evening service though, was horrifying… it was entirely too much for a sixteen year old, and I thought I would be sick before the night was over.

Revival was everything you’ve ever seen on TV, and perhaps more. Lakes of fire, eternal suffering and pain, demons, and so on. I hated every second of it. I had been to church before, and I knew that bad people went to hell, but this…this was way beyond some mild-mannered concept of detention or maybe jail. The fear and hate I felt in the room was so diametrically different from the happy glow I had felt in that very same room just one week before that I couldn’t begin to understand it. How could this be the same god? How could a loving god hold you in his hand and protect you in one moment and then decide to torture you forever in the next moment? And for what? As far as I could tell, nearly everything was sinful, and you had to live in fear all of the time in order to keep right with this monster.

That was the last time I ever went to that church or willingly went to any church. Fortunately my mom didn’t seem to mind. She was mostly a Christmas and Easter kind of Christian anyway. A few months later we wound up back in Florida – which turned out to be more “home” for both of us than mom had realized – so I didn’t have to deal very long with the guilt my cousin or my former friends tried to heap upon me.

It took me a long time to figure out what I was going to do with all of those contradictions about the Baptist god. I continued to read too much and think too much, of course. In time I realized that there was so much more that I couldn’t reconcile, and that it just didn’t seem realistic to believe that Christians had the answers. It took me even longer to figure out that nobody else had the answers either. Today I still can’t be positive of what the answer is, but I finally feel that I have a pretty good idea what it is not.

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