Augoeides

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Teen Exorcist Squad: The Movie!

I suppose it was inevitable. The Teen Exorcist Squad is now the subject of a new documentary film from Vice. The teen exorcists themselves are attractive, telegenic, and engaged in an activity that most people find truly weird, which makes them a perfect subject for a documentary. One wonders how Werner Herzog would treat this material, and if he did, my guess is that his narration alone would be worth the price of admission.

One of the most glaring aspects of the film, noted by Jezebel, is how obsessed with sexuality modern Evangelical Christians are. Apparently any sort of sexual activity, volutary or otherwise, exposes you to the dangers of demonic possession. If that were really true, I imagine that the human race would have died out long before now - because, you know, sexuality is how we reproduce. Furthermore, given the number of sexual acts going on in the world at any one time, if this "risk" were anything other than infinitesimal our entire species would almost certainly be completely infested. The Jezebel article quotes the following from the film:

"Satan can't just go into anybody that he wants to. He has to have a legal right."

You can catch demons from having sex with prostitutes.

You can catch demons from being sexually abused.

Teen exorcists stay away from things like Harry Potter, witchcraft, violence, Twilight (mostly because the storyline is "not attractive at all"), really scary horror movies, and "sexual stuff."

Well, I can't fault them for disliking Twilight. That series is just awful and suggests that there might be something to the Mormon religion, as I can't imagine how a writer as bad and unknown as Stephanie Meyer could have gotten such a huge book contract short of divine intervention. It should also be pointed out that the obsession with sexuality is a lot newer than one might expect. The Puritans of the seventeenth century, for example, are commonly cited as an example of a sexually repressive form of Christianity. However, they were in fact much more open about sexuality than the form of Christianity practiced by the teen exorcists and preached by their spiritual leader, Bob Larson.

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