Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media [Hardcover]

Bill Ellis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2000

Raising the Devil reveals how the Christian Pentecostal movement, right-wing conspiracy theories, and an opportunistic media turned grassroots folk traditions into the Satanism scare of the 1980s. During the mid-twentieth century, devil worship was seen as merely an isolated practice of medieval times. But by the early 1980s, many influential experts in clinical medicine and in law enforcement were proclaiming that satanic cults were widespread and dangerous. By examining the broader context for alleged "cult" activity, Bill Ellis demonstrates how the image of contemporary Satanism emerged during the 1970s. Blaming a wide range of mental and physical illnesses on in-dwelling demons, a faction of the Pentecostal movement became convinced that their gifts of the spirit were being opposed by satanic activities. They attributed these activities to a "cult" that was the evil twin of true Christianity. In some of the cases Ellis considers, common folk beliefs and rituals were misunderstood as evidence of devil worship. In others, narratives and rituals themselves were used to combat satanic forces. As the media found such stories more and more attractive, any activity with even remotely occult overtones was demonized in order to fit a model of absolute good confronting evil. Ellis's wide-ranging investigation covers ouija boards, cattle mutilation, graveyard desecration, and "diabolical medicine"--the psychiatric community's version of exorcism. He offers a balanced view of contentious issues such as demonic possession, satanic ritual abuse, and the testimonies of confessing "ex-Satanists." A trained folklorist, Ellis seeks to navigate a middle road in this dialog, and his insights into informal religious traditions clarify how the image of Satanism both explained and created deviant behavior.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

During the 1970s, argues English and American studies professor Ellis (Penn State Hazleton), Satanism reemerged in American and English societyAat least according to the media and to Pentecostals, who, by the mid-1980s, claimed that thousands of Satanic cults had sprung up all across America. Satanists purportedly drank animal blood and participated in bizarre sexual practices. But many of these so-called Satanic rituals, says Ellis, were really just ordinary folk practices. The observers, worried about restive, acid-tripping youth, often misunderstood these traditional rituals or simply invented scary scenarios from whole cloth. Rumormongers were especially instrumental in fomenting the Satanism scare. In one Pennsylvania town, locals spread the word that there would be a ritual murder or suicide at the high school prom; the gossip had roots in the suicide of one teenager who was rumored to have flirted with the occult. While Ellis admits that there is a grain of truth in the anticult activists' fears, the "ritual abuse investigations" they launched in the 1980s were mostly wastes of time and resources, damaging the reputations of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of innocent people. Although his thesis about the media's role in sensationalizing folk practices is intriguing, Ellis's argument is difficult to follow and too frequently gets lost amidst all the good storytelling. Aren't professional folklorists supposed to do more than merely repeat the stories of the people they study? (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In the 1980s, the media focused attention on Satanism and related phenomena such as Black Masses, ritual abuse, blood rites, Ouija rituals, grave robbing, vampires, and animal mutilation. Are these real and fearsome facts or simply scare fictions? Or does the reality lie somewhere else? In this scholarly text, Ellis (English and American studies, Pennsylvania State Univ., Hazelton) presents a wealth of information on these phenomena and puts them in the context of folklore and folk traditions. By doing so, he provides a means of evaluating the reports of such aberrant behavior. As ways of understanding the world, folk stories and traditions can sometimes be mistaken for reality when they are instead explanations of reality. In fact, argues Ellis convincingly, folklore might have given rise to some of the behavior he is studying here. Highly recommended as a lucid and well-documented account of a subject that is not always given thoughtful treatment.DJohn Moryl, Yeshiva Univ. Libs., New York
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky (October 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813121701
• ISBN-13: 978-0813121703
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,098,016 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bedeviled, March 17, 2001

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media (Hardcover)

It was a great show while it lasted, the subject of fervent newspaper reports, television specials and an exposé by Geraldo Rivera in the 1980s. Satanism was rampant across America, nay, the world, with protean manifestations, if people would just pay attention. Twenty years before, there had been Satanism, but it was not very well publicized and not very interesting. But somehow it became the fashionable scare. How did this happen, and what should we do about it?

Bill Ellis is a folklorist, and an academic specializing in English and American studies. His book, Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media (University Press of Kentucky) attempts a sympathetic understanding of how the Devil made one of his cyclic emergences and how folklore can affect society and politics. Scares about Satan and witchcraft have been present for centuries, and seem to give a safety valve for social aggression, scapegoating deviant individuals. At the individual level of, say, someone who thinks he is possessed by a demon and someone who thinks he can cast that demon out, there is a social agreement on a folkloric belief that may be beneficial for both concerned (if not for the demon). But Ellis's theme is that social groups can take over a folkloric belief to push a religious or governmental agenda, with disastrous consequences. He shows how demon possession and speaking in tongues are two sides of the same coin, and how belief in demons was ballooned into the belief that there was a huge underground satanic network ruining our country. Those who promulgated such conspiracy beliefs also bought into conspiracies involving Jews, vampires, the Illuminati, and cattle mutilations.

Raising the Devil is an academic work, well documented and organized. Ellis tries to illuminate the role of the folklorist in examining these sorts of belief, and realizes that he and his fellows have the difficult road to follow of accepting folklore (even if it is patently untrue) as a force between small numbers of individuals, while they also have to confront institutions that would harness folklore for political or religious change. His academic prose is leavened by the strange subject matter. For instance, the Governor of Colorado is quoted as saying that cattle mutilations were "one of the greatest outrages in the history of the western cattle industry," and a leader of a coven in England warned about bogus cult groups, as he had heard about one in which members "started getting in prostitutes dressed in rubber gear and there was wife swapping, too. It gives Satanism a bad name."

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Satan? Or just your imagination?, November 29, 2005

By 

Stefan Isaksson "www.stefanisaksson.se" (Malmoe, Sweden) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media (Hardcover)

It wouldn't surprise me at all if some people believe that Ellis doesn't have the "right" to write a book like Raising the Devil, and not would I be very surprised if many of these critics stated their opinions without even bother reading the book. But why shouldn't Ellis be allowed to make a thorough analysis of the so-called "satanic panic" that raged in both North America and Great Britain from time to time during the 20th century? Because, he happens to be an active member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. And to many narrow-minded Satanists, this equals an inability to remain objective.

Well, that might be so, but let's not consider the fact that he happens to be a Christian. He also happens to be a folklorist, and a very good one, too. He might be the most Christian guy you ever met; this still doesn't stop him from with Raising the Devil creating a book that's not only a high-quality analysis of how Satanism and devil worship, both in America and Great Britain, were forced to become the no.1 scapegoats for various social ills; it's also a study that most self-appointed Satanists should read and ponder. And let's not forget all the hard-core Christians who never hesitated to put the blame on something without making sure to know all the facts first.

What Ellis does is describing how phenomena that not necessarily has any reality to it still becomes something very real, when fear for the unknown and unnatural forces the antagonists into creating something that isn't really there to begin with. Or in the words of Ellis himself discussing alleged witch-cults in Great Britain: "The claim that they existed seems to have brought the witch-cults into existence", that is, it wasn't until people started worrying about witches that witches came into existence.

In America, not-so objective representations of different law enforcement agencies and Pentecostals, with their fanatic struggle to exterminate everything which in their eyes was satanic and evil, resulted in the accusations of both innocent individuals and actions. It's a thin line between what's good and what's evil, and the most fascinating aspect of his study is his ambition to point out how fanatics (mostly Christians) with extreme, yet well-meaning, intentions are mostly to blame. Their ruthless crusade against everything occult (which in their eyes were a whole lot of things), turned out to be "a sincere but wrong-headed effort to fight the devil by raising the devil".

So far, Sweden has been spared the same kind of hysteria about satanic panic and occult conspiracies, mostly because we simply don't have the same kind of religious landscape that the U.S. has. However, there's always a risk for fiction to become more believable than truth wherever folk-narratives and folk-processes are able to triumph over what's really out there, and because of this, books such as Raising the Devil are good tools in the fight against imaginations and prejudices.

9 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT BOOK!!, February 14, 2001

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"wezt" (Potomac, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media (Hardcover)

This is a book that I could not put down! It explains how the media reacts so viciously to Satanism and new religions, which they know very little about. I myself am a Satanist and think that the media makes it sound much more evil than it really is. I think this was a good book because I can relate to the media and Satanists.