Helaman: Manichaeism in America & Satan

Background

The tension between “I am responsible for my sins” and “it isn’t my fault—it’s coming from outside me” never entirely goes away. It certainly didn’t in the nineteenth century.

Calvinists believed in demons. Increase Mather produced the first American (colonial) collection of folklore when he compiled Remarkable Providences, an assortment of tales from the New and Old World about paranormal happenings. The fascinating aspect of the book is that although both Mathers are often blamed for furthering beliefs in witchcraft through their publications, the tales in this particular book come across more as “Woah! Didja hear about that poltergeist who caused all kinds of problems for that family down the block?!”

Two hundred years later, Increase and his son Cotton would be hosting ghost-hunting “reveals” on television.

Jonathan Edwards, who may in fact have believed in Satan less, being a product of Enlightenment thinking, seems more prone to use demons and hellfire as a scare tactic than Increase Mather, who thoroughly believed in them.

I was reminded of an incident in my teen years. I was at a slumber party where the adult leader—who was likely in her late twenties—wanted to tell us teen girls numerous “my roommate who was possessed by an evil spirit” tales. She wasn't doing it in a jokey, storyteller way--she wasn't telling urban legends--but rather as a believer who couldn't wait to relate her adventures. 

Finally, one of the girls said sternly, “I’m not okay with this. Let’s say a prayer.” She said a prayer and the discussion ended.

So modern-day teens who sorta, kinda, maybe believe in demons perceive them more as Edwards did (terrifying threats) than as Mather did (fodder for publication). 

After all, what I remember most was the sheer disappointment on the leader’s face. She didn’t just think she was being entertaining. She wanted to tell stories about devils and demons.

In my novel Saint of Mars, my Catholic priest Rhys remarks to his personal lurking Cubus (an invisible being):

“[People prefer a] world populated by the familiar. You know, when Puritans established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, they left behind a landscape of elves and sprites and goblins. How lonely they were, adrift without their invisible companions. It is difficult to uproot what Father Hadaka calls yokai from place. Cubi [invisible sentient beings] offer a balanced Mars.”

 “Angels as well as demons,” Lider said, and Rhys smiled.

Even if they had to leave their local elves and fairies and sprites at home, the immigrants to New England brought beliefs in such beings with them as well as beliefs in magic. The educated preachers perceived any use of magic as negative—it meant that humans were attempting to undermine the grace of God by taking for themselves what only God could offer. If He wants you to suffer, you should suffer.

But beliefs in supernatural beings--and the methods to corral or at least appease those beings--were prevalent amongst "commoners," and they lingered. Accusations of witchcraft decreased as civil lawsuits became more and more of a norm. However, such accusations and related "news" continued well into the 1800s. The belief in vampires provided communal explanations for tragedy--vampires as responsible for deaths from tuberculosis, for instance--into the late nineteenth century (I would argue that the same tales and beliefs transferred, in part, to space aliens in the twentieth century).

So one answer to why people believe in devils and demons and Satanic forces is for something to blame. Another, as suggested by Rhys, is comfort. Calvinism removed Saints (an entire pantheon of beings between humans and God) from the top-down part of their belief system. Puritans filled that void with demons. In some ways, Calvinist attachment to the less positive denizens of the unseen world fell into the above first category: Demons exist, yes, but one isn't supposed to do much more with them than resist their influence. Magic is wrong, not because it is fake but because it takes one's eyes off God.

The "sure they exist but so what?" approach was emphasized with the Enlightenment. Demons were there but irrelevant and kind of tacky. As Jonathan Edwards preached, a believer should focus on grace, immediate sanctification, and a reasonable God.

I suggest that for many believers, the philosophy of the Enlightenment wasn't an unalloyed good. Beliefs in cosmic evil were passionately revived during the late eighteenth to nineteenth centuries alongside Millennialism. Astrology, magic, miracles, supernatural encounters, visions, dreams—the good and the bad of transmundane beliefs—resurged in a push back against Enlightenment thinking. The feeling was that so much orderliness was stripping humans of the full spiritual experience.

Consequently, in recent years, some writers have blamed the Enlightenment for ruining religion while Enlightenment believers have blamed religion for keeping everyone thinking medievally. 

I think the argument is as pointless as atheists arguing with fundamentalists. The Enlightenment—a highly varied movement itself—underscored the concept of a rational and reasonable deity. The associated assumptions impacted the entire human experience from church organization to charity work to scripture reading. Many things people take for granted—such as forensics as evidence—are both older than the Enlightenment and were encouraged by the Enlightenment. Theology, likewise, has always focused on producing a coherent explanation of God and God's acts.

On the other side (supposedly on the other side), belief in things beyond the observable senses is part of the human condition. Hence, the Satanic daycare accusations that took off in the 1980s. And I haven’t even discussed The Exorcist! (I’m not going to.) 

There's a reason human beings can imagine and plan and create connections between people and events and objects. They can always imagine more, much more! 

In addition, there are far too many instances of human beings taking observable evidence as the end of a conversation and being wrong for a sensible person not to accept that life is more complicated than what is immediately on the table.

Blaming the Enlightenment OR blaming religious beliefs is a waste of time. Anything can be turned into a fetishistic object of worship, including non-supernatural events and people and things. Better to accept both sides of the human experience--the search for rational explanations; the search for unknowables, including the possible supernatural--and THEN try to come up with a decent solution. 

The Book of Mormon and Satan

A Nephi solves a murder mystery!

Satan/devil is referred to throughout The Book of Mormon but usually as a lone element rather than a being with a court. Demons/devils are referred to approximately 10 times; Satan/devil approximately 100. 

A consistent thread runs through the references. Satan/devil has the ability to tempt, to “lead away,” “to captivate,” “to grasp.”

Agency, however, is continually placed back on the table; the individual may “yield” to Satan and “forget” God. Likewise, in Joseph Smith’s translation of the Old Testament, Pharaoh, not God, hardens his own heart.

The Book of Mormon is tackling an issue that showed up in the Salem Witch Trials. One reason the Salem Witch Trials became such a seminal event is precisely because it was a kind of crossroads. Both older courts and more modern ones would have handled the matter better. But the times created a kind of vacuum. Are demons real? If they are real, how do we know? Who are the actual afflicted? The girls? Or the people they accuse? How do we know the accused aren’t suffering because of their righteousness?

An older court may have wondered who was actually possessed and spent more time parsing neighbors’ testimony. A more modern court would have ignored the spectral evidence entirely. Unfortunately, a confluence of events—some political, some personal—came together to create a storm of irrationality by anyone’s standards, including the standards of people of the day.

The nineteenth century was still grappling with many of the above questions. Joseph Smith, for one, accepts the idea of demons without giving up on human agency. That approach dovetails with the solution to grace and works that pervades The Book of Mormon, coming into focus in Helaman. We are the creators of our destinies—we bring our stories upon ourselves:

“[People] may be restored grace for grace, according to their works. I would that all...might be saved” (12: 24-25).

Supernatural forces are not dismissed. But in the tension between “bad stuff is due to outside forces” and “bad stuff is due to inside forces,” the inside forces are given more weight. So Samuel the Lamanite’s prophecying combines:

 “Behold, we are surrounded by demons, yea, we are encircled about by the angels of him who hath sought to destroy our souls” (13:37)

-with-

“And now remember, remember, my brethren, that whosoever perisheth, perisheth unto himself; and whosoever doeth iniquity, doeth it unto himself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free” (14:30)

In the end, Joseph Smith appears to have found the world of supernatural evil rather dull--the opposite of founding cities and building temples and restoring/creating ceremonies and binding together families and imagining/revealing eternal glorious futures. 

He wouldn't have been offended by the teen leader who wanted to tell stories about possession and exorcism. 

He would have wanted to talk about something bigger and more interesting instead.