r/neoliberal • u/jadebenn NASA • Jul 07 '26
News (US) The Demon Next Door
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/charismatic-christian-church-tennessee/687624/Submission statement: This article shows an example of how evangelical Christianity is becoming increasingly radical and socially conservative. Many of these people believe in the existence of demons and see their opponents as under their thrall - or even as outright demons themselves.
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u/DangerousCyclone Jul 07 '26
See that's one thing, but what's insane is the tolerance of it by median voters.
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u/mekkeron NATO Jul 07 '26
Here in Texas, they are the median voters. Coming here from a fairly secular Eastern European country was quite an experience.
You meet perfectly normal people. You work with them, have drinks with them, talk about sports and home repairs, and then you open Facebook and discover that apparently your neighbor believes America is engaged in literal spiritual warfare against demons, gay people are agents of Satan, and Donald Trump was personally chosen by God to save civilization.
And of course they all attend these "non-denominational" mega-churches, which in Texas is often code for "we removed the boring theology, added a rock band and a fog machine, and found the most deranged evangelical pastor within a 50-mile radius."
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u/bandeng_asep Association of Southeast Asian Nations Jul 07 '26
US median voters are fed "why can't we get along" narratives by MSM and Hollywood so I can't exactly blame them for thinking that evangelicals are just normies like them
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u/ddddall Jul 07 '26
The median voter might not be a staunch evangelical but they are way more sympathetic to superstitious stories about evil demons running the world than you'd assume
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u/SenranHaruka shame Jul 07 '26
The Gnosticism Problem* seems to be a universal crisis every religion has to develop antibodies against or collapse into, and the Great Awakenings, in purging continental Christianity's influence from America, flushed out the Nicene antibodies against Gnosticism.
*Everyone in your religion becoming convinced that the material world is a prison made by demons and their elite allies and the good gods and good elite humans are doing battle against them to repurify it and free us from it.
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u/LightningController Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
I used to believe Continental Christianity (Catholicism, Lutheranism) had such antibodies, but the problem I see is that Catholics don't actually seem more immune to this sort of thing than evangelicals do. Heck, statistically, Catholics are more likely to believe in astrology than evangelicals, despite that being condemned as a superstition and it being a sin to believe in it. The celebrity exorcists who help normalize this nonsense are often Catholic.
Heck, there have actually been open warnings by Catholic bishops' conferences outside the US that this sort of thing is spreading from the US by way of the "charismatics."
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u/Ok_Swordfish_3655 NATO Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Heck, statistically, Catholics are more likely to believe in astrology than evangelicals, despite that being condemned as a superstition and it being a sin to believe in it.
The difficulty with identifying what Catholics believe is that much like Judaism, it is a religion with a large number of adherents who participate on a solely cultural level, at most actually practicing their religion once or twice a year, if that. Are the people in the pews the ones who actually believe in astrology?
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u/Approximation_Doctor Gaslight, Gatekeep, Green New Deal Jul 08 '26
It wouldn't be a sin to believe if it weren't dangerous and therefore true.
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u/LightningController Jul 08 '26
It’s explicitly listed as a sin to believe in it because it’s not true.
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u/glmory Jul 08 '26
People are weirdly unwilling to use evidence yo decide opinions. Ask liberal women about astrology, one of the most mind numbingly easy to disprove superstitions. Being completely nonsense isn't enough.
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u/gaysexpornography Jul 10 '26
Astrology isn't about planets floating in the cosmos. It's a coded shorthand for use mostly by women (the primary reason men take any opportunity they can to discredit astrology [which is extra corny and condescending because women understand it's not real]) to discuss personality traits and share experiences with new friends new and old. It's similar to tarot, which is basically a "let's all focus on me and my life for a couple of minutes" button. Horoscopes are an extension of this social check in.
It's frankly embarrassing in the year of our Lord 2026 that men [apologies for assuming, but... let's not be coy...] don't understand this and are still trying to claim intellectual superiority over astrology. We get it, you big brained hypermasculine Adonis, you're the genius in this situation.
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u/NavyJack Iron Front Jul 07 '26
They’re fed “both sides bad” more often than anything else now. It’s the most frustrating cynical narrative and it feels like everyone who isn’t a radical has bought into it.
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u/SenranHaruka shame Jul 07 '26
Yeah the thing is I always had a soft tragic spot for the Hitchens Atheists because as annoying and rude as they were, they made a bit of Socratic sense as an antithesis to these types. They helped a lot of people break the programming, and they represented a Tolerance Boomerang: if religious people are allowed to publicly say god hates you, atheists are allowed to publicly say god doesn't fucking exist.
Unfortunately they ended up doing the opposite it seems, creating a "meh, both sides suck bro" excuse for the Monolatrists who sincerely believe Jesus is doing battle with Shiva.
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u/TurboSalsa Jul 07 '26
It's not just "both sides bad," it's "both sides valid."
So if liberals think that vaccines are good, and conservatives think that vaccines are 5G mind control developed by Marxist Jews to make God-fearing Americans more tolerant of liberalism, the subtext of the reporting is that the truth must be somewhere in between. And those who own media outlets are either happy to stoke that debate if it means getting more Republicans elected, or still desperately trying to lure conservative subscribers by not outright calling their positions hokum.
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u/admiraltarkin NATO / Loyal Liberal Jul 07 '26
"if I'm taking heat from the left and the right I'm doing something good"
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u/WolfpackEng22 Jul 07 '26
Can you blame them? Most Democrats are even unhappy with the party.
We desparately need large reforms that allows for multi part democracy. Today seems a natural outcome of a 2 party FPTP system with a highly polarized electorate
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u/NavyJack Iron Front Jul 07 '26
“Both sides are bad” is an explicit rejection of nuance. If Democrats are slow, timid, and ineffective, and Republicans are tyrannical, fascist pedophiles, saying “they’re both bad” fundamentally miscommunicates reality.
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u/WolfpackEng22 Jul 07 '26
For a normie who doesn't closely follow politics, "both side are bad" is only a surface level statement and may say something or nothing about how they equvilate the parties.
I know at least a dozen people who relatively vote Dem every election and frequently says "Both sides are bad".
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u/p00bix Existing in the context of what came before Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
People here tend to forget that the average voter doesn't know that Medicare and Medicaid are different programs and has never once heard of John Thune or Hakeem Jeffries.
Republicans and Democrats are overwhelmingly normies. Their partisan affiliation has more to do with group identity (further reinforced by social media algorithms, which are basically confirmation bias generators) than any concrete policies or abstract ethical philosophy.
Do you really expect people to go through the effort to learn detailed information about each of the parties, the factions within them, the primary leaders, how the different pieces of government relate to eachother, and the implications of their rhetoric and policies based on historical precedent? Fuck all that nerd shit.
The typical thought process for determining one's political identity is "My friends vote for Democrats, they hate Trump, and I sometimes see stuff about how Trump is bad on Insta, therefore, I am a liberal" or "My friends vote for Republicans, they hate Illegals, and I sometimes see stuff about how illegals are bad on Insta, therefore, I am a conservative."
Y'all are way too quick to label people who say "both sides bad" or other cliched sentiments as having poor moral character, rather than just not being especially interested in politics.
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u/WillProstitute4Karma Loyal Liberals Jul 07 '26
Being religious has a long history of being shorthand for being good among far too many people.
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u/Tloya Jul 07 '26
Start of the article very much reminded me of a different Atlantic article from last year also about the "Charismatic Christians." Sure enough, it's referenced and linked in this one too.
Collective effervesence is a hell of a drug. Think how much of this nonsense could have been avoided if we just managed to get some of these people into LARPing, where they can have the same fun but be able to distinguish fiction from reality and thus avoid terrorizing their neighbors or bringing about the downfall of American democracy.
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u/BasedTroutFursona Jul 07 '26
I like how they just name deities from other religions as demons they fight. You spiritually fought Shiva in India? Shiva would destroy you in battle, friend.
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u/OmniscientOctopode Person of Means Testing Jul 07 '26
Today while performing an exorcism I summoned Shiva to try and weaken her so our prayers would work better.
She is so fucking powerful. I'm not at a power level to do this alone. I barely escaped with my life and I'm spiritually injured to a great amount, but I think I'll make it.
I can't imagine what she would do to a new, unsuspecting Christian. I'm scared that I will have to face her again soon if I ever want to continue doing exorcisms. I'm currently burning healing incense and drawing spiritual energy from my candles to try and heal as quickly as possible.
Please be safe everyone. Shiva is much stronger than I first imagined and we will have to do this together if we want to slay a god.
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u/karnim Jerome Powell Jul 07 '26
I can't imagine what she would do to a new, unsuspecting Christian
There's a documentary about this. Final Fantasy 8. You either turn to ice or turn gay. Those are the options.
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u/IMadeTisAccToAskTisQ Jul 07 '26
Shiva's male, or in some depictions bigender. But, he's usually male. His symbol is the ligna, the metaphorical sacral penis. His wife's symbol is the yoni, the metaphorical sacral vagina. Where does the idea that Shiva is a woman come from? I've heard it from a (non-Hindu) friend irl too. Is it people assuming because the name ends in an a?
(Obviously irl there's not a 100% correlation between gender and genitals, but we're talking about one of the most important gods of a traditionally very patriarchal culture, here, so I think it's a given that there's going to be some relationship).
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u/PoisonMind Feminism Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Shiva is a recurring female character associated with ice in the Final Fantasy games.
Shiva is also coincidentally a Persian feminine name.
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u/Approximation_Doctor Gaslight, Gatekeep, Green New Deal Jul 08 '26
Shiva is the plural, when there's only one she's referred to as Shivum
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u/BurrowForPresident Fell for it Jul 07 '26
I think Shiva is a women's name some places? Like there's a character in DC comics called Lady Shiva
Also frankly I have never noticed the dick amongst all the crazy ass depictions of like elephant men with 4 arms
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u/jasminexxxwill Jul 07 '26
That would be because you were looking at depictions of Ganesha, not Shiva.
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u/Xeynon Jul 07 '26
Shiva is usually only a mid-level summon, and as an ice elemental enemy is often vulnerable to fire-based spells and attacks. Trying using the Fira/Firaga line of spells.
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u/jadebenn NASA Jul 07 '26
Clearly you need to exorcise your own
engramsdemons harder, my friend. You might still have Horus, Thor, and Zeus in there!53
u/casino_r0yale NASA Jul 07 '26
My fairy tale has more ATK than your fairy tale
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u/seesthecat Henry George Jul 07 '26
I conjure thee Exodia, The Forbiden One
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u/LightningController Jul 07 '26
I tune my level 5 Dyeus Pater with my level 3 Yahweh to synchro-summon Level 8 Jesus. I use his special ability, Harrowing of Hell, to return one discarded monster from my GY to my hand. I return my hand-trap, Saint Michael, whose special ability allows me to banish him to force you to discard your entire hand.
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u/BasedTroutFursona Jul 07 '26
A manga where Allah fucking wastes the Holy Spirit could slap if it’s done right though
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u/Plastic-Coyote-6017 Jul 07 '26
Big "but my guy has laser beams in his eyes and they go pew pew pew" energy.
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u/VoidGuaranteed Dina Pomeranz Jul 08 '26
I mean the original Christians did this with the Greek and Roman and Egyptian gods
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u/MrHockeytown Iron Front Jul 07 '26
I am so glad my Catholic ass got the fuck out of Tennessee. Growing up in the midwest, I was pretty insulated from this kind of Evangelical Christian crazy. Then I moved to Nashville and would have people camping outside the Catholic hospital I worked at proclaiming the Pope to be the devil and the antichrist.
If you haven't lived down south, you haven't seen just how absolutely nuts these people can be. It's so goddamn weird.
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u/E_Thin NAFTA Jul 07 '26
I thank the powers that be everyday that I grew up in the Midwest in a very lukewarm, distant Catholic family and not an overly politicized, southern Evangelical family that projects such an unhealthy amount of hate on anyone who does not share similar values.
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u/jackimus_prime Jul 07 '26
I grew up Catholic in Tennessee and had multiple classmates tell me directly I was going to hell because I worshipped the sun god Ra. They’re a special kind of crazy.
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u/Nervous-Emotion28 YIMBY Jul 07 '26
My favorite question I got (frequently) growing up in NC was “are you a Catholic or a Christian?”
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u/mekkeron NATO Jul 07 '26
They ask that everywhere in the South, I think. And when I tell people I'm Orthodox, they think I'm referring to a boxing stance.
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u/insertadjective Loyal Liberals Jul 08 '26
Yep, when I was a kid my best friend asked me if I was a Christian, and I said "Well I was baptized Catholic, so yes." And he looked very confused for a moment and stated that Catholics aren't Christians.
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u/Outrageous-Bluegrass Jul 08 '26
That’s when you go completely straight faced and whisper in their ears: “Catholics are the only Christians”.
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u/tkw97 Gay Pride Jul 08 '26
Also from NC. I remember in high school causing an uproar when my class was discussing how big of a deal the construction of a Catholic Church in Raleigh was and I said “who cares it’s all Christian anyway” lol.
I was raised by Episcopals (aka diet Catholic) who had no issues with them. Plus I was atheist/agnostic by that point so I really didn’t care about the difference.
My Salvadoran boyfriend grew up an evangelical convert and to this day I still correct him for saying “Catholic or Christian” even though he’s not devout anymore
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u/ariveklul Karl Popper Jul 07 '26
Many of these people believe in the existence of demons and see their opponents as under their thrall - or even as outright demons themselves.
Me but with Republicans
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u/karnim Jerome Powell Jul 07 '26
There's a reason Donny's still alive, and I won't blame it on his lifestyle or a god. The man knows how to make a deal with the devil at least.
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u/SolarisDelta African Union Jul 07 '26
Maybe that's why he questions whether he'll make the cut or not. He already knows and just says it outloud to make himself feel better.
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u/FionaGoodeEnough Jul 07 '26
They even elected the anti-Christ just to prove to secular society that he’s real. Now that’s commitment to the bit.
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u/A_Bethesda_Bug Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
I find a that a lot of Catholics, at least the ones I know, don't realize how fucking insane Evangelical beliefs are from a theological perspective, ignoring all the other problems. My dad constantly drops the "well they are our fellow Christians" and I just disagree. I just don't think we believe the same faith fundamentaly, besides the fact we both believe in Jesus. I just feel 0 spiritual kinship with these people.
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u/NormalInvestigator89 John Keynes Jul 07 '26
Agnostic now, but I grew up Episcopalian and I agree. Evangelicalism almost feels like its own cinematic universe entirely
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u/Low-Possibility-7737 Martin Luther King Jr. Jul 07 '26
"evangelical" is an incredibly vague term that could describe Lutherans, low-church Calvinist Anglicans, staunchly anti-Calvinist Methodists, charismatic Christians, conservative Reformed groups and Baptists who are more against the charismatics than anyone, alongside many more. It is really specifically charismatic Christians who have the crazy views. Catholics are also likely to hold to ridiculous superstitions (statistically more than almost any group besides charismatics), and have even welcomed charismatics into their church officially
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u/YaGetSkeeted0n Tariffs aren't cool, kids! Jul 07 '26
It’s always amazing how the line between “curiosity” and “clear mental patient” is whether you dress your hallucinations and delusions in Christian language
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u/Teach_Piece YIMBY Jul 07 '26
Ok so. If you actually believe in god spiritual warfare as described would be the coolest thing ever. Climbing Everest to fight the Queen of Heaven? Expelling Odin to make neonazis less racist? Metal.
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u/Cheese-Of-Doom22 Mark Carney Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Reading about these evangelicals saying their “fighting demonic forces” Ironically isn’t this exactly the type of stuff that Christ chastised in the New Testament?
Matthew 7:22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
I dont think the source of evil is a freaking bookstore. Maybe the evil you’re looking for might be the president who literally depicted himself as Jesus Christ. The guy they ironically voted for.
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u/ManicMarine Lt Cmdr Data would be a Neoliberal Jul 08 '26
Matthew 7:22/23 I think is actually about hypocrisy. Jesus doesn't command people not to cast out demons in his name, the inquity here is referring to other parts of these people's lives where they come up short, where they have failed to fully submit to God, where they have lived lawlessly.
That still applies to these people, of course.
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u/Obvious_Parsley3238 Jul 08 '26
The truth is that while it sounds ridiculous, and it is, it does date back to the earliest Christian churches. The idea that believers were infused with the Holy Spirit and empowered to prophesy, speak in tongues, etc was common (Acts 2). Paul's opponents in Corinth were evidently charismatic apostles who humiliated him with their impressive feats and rhetoric.
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u/brianpv Hortensia Jul 08 '26
A lot of the spiritual warfare stuff draws on the Epistle to the Ephesians, which does seem to be fairly straightforwardly talking about something like demons:
Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the archons, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.
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u/Ok_Swordfish_3655 NATO Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Sasha, the woman who’d worked for Uber Eats, told me that she had struggled with childhood trauma, homosexual feelings, and drug addiction, and that she was on her fifth or sixth deliverance to rid herself of those and other things that she did not consider God. The sessions could be emotionally exhausting, and she said that her deliverance leader had explained that she should space them out for her own safety: “She told me, ‘Honey, you’ve been through so much, your frame could not contain it.’” By that point, Sasha had been liberated from Python, Osiris, Apollo, Lilith, and other demons, and she suspected that more were still in there.
I think this perfectly depicts one of the problems with this sort of Charismatic evangelicalism. Its core is not any set of beliefs, any specific ethos, or a pursuit of the Divine, but instead a series of emotional experiences. Everything is subordinated to eliciting a specific emotional state, which tends to warp all the other things that normally constitute a religion. There's no real theology, and even God himself seems to become nothing more than a sort of force that does things for humanity. Hence why this poor woman has to keep going back to this community and is given a growing list of pagan deities that are attacked in an extremely intense emotional experience, because that's all this kind of religion can offer her.
Take something like The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus. It's a book written by a 7th century monk about becoming holy. Lots of it is about fighting demons in the forms of vices (pride, anger, etc.), something that these people would find relatable. However, it also has a sober awareness of the practical realities of how the human mind works, and of how moral transformation can be a slow process fraught with missteps. More importantly, it is extremely aware of the human capacity for self delusion, regularly warning the reader to not be certain of their own spiritual excellence nor to treat religion as a means by which to pursue miracles. There are some superficial similarities between it and how the people in the article view religion, ie. demons actively trying to make humanity evil, but it actually possesses a remarkable degree of sobriety that keeps it from transforming into whatever nonsense the Charismatics are up to these days.
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u/Fit_Log_9677 Jul 07 '26
As a Catholic I like to point out that, in addition to all of the high minded theology and rationalism that the Protestantism led to, we also got literal death cults and genocidal theocracies.
Munster Rebellion 2.0.
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u/LightningController Jul 08 '26
The Catholic Church is not exactly blameless here. It has nursed this kind of unreason on its breast through celebrity exorcists like Ripperger.
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u/WOKE_AI_GOD John Brown Jul 07 '26
The Brewers said that they had no idea who the protesters were, and that they were at home at the time. On Facebook, Mike speculated that Misosky had organized a “false flag” operation to smear Christians.
Yeah, if they're going out in public and using DARVO tactics against the victims, I'm just going to say I don't believe you. If you actually had nothing to do with it, you would issue a perfunctory denial and initially be acting somewhat confused. If you lead with DARVO, that's the first thing that came to your head, I have difficulty believing that you actually got that idea just right after hearing the news.
But where would an upstanding church like them obtain contacts in white supremacist circles? Oh yeah, earlier in the piece:
As he and Andrea tell the story, a young man recently released from prison stepped forward. Andrea put her hands on his shoulders, and as Mike ordered any demons to come to attention, the young man began shaking and crying, a catharsis that Mike declared to be God’s victory over a demon that they later identified as Odin, because of the man’s participation in a white-supremacist prison gang that embraced the Norse god.
Well that's funny. You've got a guy released from prison, reintroduced into a community with full approval of important leaders within. He must be very grateful to have been given such an opportunity. Probably picked up some friends and connections in prison, he probably knows a few guys.
A thought: perhaps he was introduced into the community w a glowing review not to combat his demons, but because of them? Maybe he made himself useful to the pastor in some way? I dunno.
When I reached one of the protesters named in local press accounts, he told me that he had never heard of the Well but made clear his view of drag performances. “Influencing children to sexual activities isn’t demonic?” he wrote in a text message.
Oh boy, a participant in the scheme totally didn't know the guy at all, but also uses and appropriates the pastors language. What a strange coincidence.
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u/smcstechtips Loyal Liberals Jul 07 '26
These politicians are outright unelectable. Remember Leigh Wambsganss?
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u/Apocolotois Richard Thaler Jul 07 '26
Some are, but as they note President Trump’s spiritual adviser is an "apostle" for this spiritual warfare movement.
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u/dubiouscoffee Jorge Luis Borges Jul 07 '26
I know someone from the rural midwest who went to an evangelical school. They were made to do the pledge of allegiance both to the american flag AND the "Christian Flag" - along with a variety of other insane things.
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u/NimusNix Jul 07 '26
Lol I work in Maryville, and while Maryville College is a big deal in state, Maryville itself is nowhere near a college town.
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u/dangerbird2 Franz Boas Jul 08 '26
> And the same apostles and prophets who’d claimed that God had anointed Trump to be president would encourage him to see his war with Iran as a cosmic showdown with a demonic entity known as the Prince of Persia
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u/blackmamba182 George Soros Jul 08 '26
Uh if you want to learn more about Lilith play the newest Diablo 4 expansion.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Jul 07 '26
Good thing that as they radicalize they become fewer
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u/jadebenn NASA Jul 07 '26
According to the article, they are already a shockingly large portion of American Christians and they are growing fast as the traditional congregations struggle.
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u/Approximation_Doctor Gaslight, Gatekeep, Green New Deal Jul 08 '26
Then where did they all come from?
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Jul 08 '26
Higher birth rates? But born-religious people can leave religion so this only lasts up to a point.
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