Mar 05 | Oily Bibles and Oilier Exorcists (Letters from the Coast)

Last Saturday found me puzzling my way through this article on the “miraculous” oil Bible of Dalton, Georgia. The basic story is that two friends, Johnny Taylor and Jerry Pearce, claimed that a Bible belonging to them began to miraculously ooze oil. For the two men, the production of the oil was a holy sign, connected to mystical visions they’d had concerning Trump and God’s support of the administration. People from all over the country came to see it, and made claims that the oil had healing properties, although Taylor and Pearce were always careful to say that the oil was more of a symbol pointing to a healing God.

Unlike the usual grifters, they also didn’t charge for samples or take money from others. Pastors whose communities they visited might take up offerings for them, but it wasn’t encouraged.

The story ended the way you might think it would. Someone caught a glimpse of Pearce buying mineral oil from an auto shop in huge quantities, and while he vigorously denied ever using it to fool people, it seems quite clear that’s exactly what happened.

I had never heard of a holy relic producing oil, but I understand the symbolism. Oil is a deeply sacred symbol in many world religions. I’ve also of course heard of other substances “spontaneously” coming forth, like tears of blood from stone statues.

As I read, I suddenly remembered one of the still images I had collected for a project I’d done in seminary on exorcism. The image presented a black man being “exorcised” by a white man holding a large and ornate crucifix and a Bible, both of which he pressed against people’s heads, or even lightly slapped them. The exorcist’s name was Bob Larson, and while he is not Catholic there are many photographs of him online dressed in clericals and carrying one of these large crosses, which I suspect he sells to people. I discovered then that many Evangelical or Fundamentalist exorcists used tools like this.

Their relationship to Bibles in particular is quite…well, witchy to me. Except that’s not even a good word for it, because most witches I know would never treat a physical object quite as talismanically as these folks treat Bibles.

The crucifix was a new thing though. I had always thought that most Christians of that type would avoid anything that could be deemed “too Catholic.” But I supposed if you already believe in Bibles as magical items it’s an easy step.

And then it hit me.

It probably wasn’t that they had a theology of what happened when one used a crucifix. It more likely boiled down to The Exorcist – the film based on the book from the ‘70s. They were all replicating a ritual handed down to them from the gods of pop culture.

It’s hard to overstate the cultural impact this film had on North American Christianity in particular. The ‘70s and ‘80s were a time when North America was ramping up toward the Satanic Panic, which left thousands of people across the continent convinced that we had entered an era of widespread Satanic activity. Preschool staff were charged with so-called Satanic ritual abuse and pastors wrote hysterical books about the dangers of back-masking and heavy metal music. Buoyed up by this frenzy, pop culture itself began to mirror the interest, as it always does in order to make money. The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, The Possessed, Fear No Evil, The Visitor – these were only a few of the films that came out in that time musing on Satan and demonic forces.

Although the panic itself died down, the echoes of those deeply weird years still ring in Evangelical and Fundamentalist communities, who simply shifted their ire toward other cultural mainstays like Harry Potter.

And, of course, they kept all of the cultural artifacts that arose from those films and bands and books.

I’ve always been interested in the way that Hollywood deals with religion, but I was especially surprised to discover that the influence really did go both ways. I’d noticed that ordinary folks tended to think of a very particular set of images when they imagined what an exorcism might look like, but I hadn’t fully considered that a relatively mainstream Christian movement might be so deeply affected by these things. I wonder if that might have something to do with the fact that nondenominational churches, which make up the bulk of support for this type of work and magical thinking, are usually unaffiliated with higher levels of ecclesiastical authority or even other spiritual communities in general, and in my opinion have a fairly low bar for ordaining pastors and ministers. There’s often not much formal education, and little oversight once someone actually becomes a pastor. Like the oil Bible community, the majority of these megachurches are made up of “consumers” of religion, who go to meet a traveling speaker or speakers rather than gathering at the same place at the same time as a more traditionally structured parish would.

There are clear advantages to this way of doing things, and I’d be the last person to insist that only the highly educated be “allowed” to become pastors and ministers. But one of the things formal education does do for those who are to be given care over others is to insist upon a deep exploration and often deconstruction of the self and its motivations. Seminary does not always do this, and it seems to me that Bible college rarely does, but one can only benefit from being in a community where all strive toward a common goal of deeper understanding of holy texts and one’s own soul. This pulls us from the seductive world of reading alone, and pushes us to identify and maybe even challenge the cultural forces that have shaped us.

There’s a whole other article or seventy within me about the bizarre ways that Hollywood works out its God issues onscreen in front of the masses, but I’ll simply end by noting this:

If I had had only pop culture to go on, I would never have entered the priesthood. For one thing, Hollywood priests are exclusively men. But for another, more important point, it is a very rare film within the last fifty years that portrays God as anything other than a mute and rather sadistic force that delights in torturing those who love him (and, aside from heartwarming and rather brilliant exegetical works like Dogma, God too is always male).

Thankfully, I had what I had been taught about God, and indeed God Herself, to call me into new life.

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