Ted Cruz Exorcized

Back in February, Ted Cruz was accosted by a man who claimed that the Texas senator was possessed by a demon and needed an exorcism. Then, just last week, former Speaker of the House John Boehner described Cruz as "Lucifer in the flesh." Boehner was (most likely) speaking metaphorically, but Satanists still condemned his remarks, claiming that comparing Cruz to Lucifer was insulting to Lucifer.

Whether or not Cruz really needed that exorcism, last night in Indiana he was exorcized from the race for the Republican presidential nomination. After a big loss to Donald Trump, who still seems to be totally-not-hexed, the Texas senator suspended his campaign for the nomination. Barring something completely unexpected, Cruz' exit from the race means that Trump will be the Republican nominee.

Now just in case the Texas senator does find himself in need of an actual exorcism, last week a reporter from The Washington Post contacted practicing exorcist and Teen Exorcist Squad leader Bob Larson to find out how he would go about doing it.

"I would treat him no differently than I would treat anyone else," Larson said. (He intimated that he'd dealt with political leaders — including some I'd be familiar with — but he declined to name names.)

When presented with someone who friends or family think may be possessed, Larson first ensures that the person has seen a therapist or doctor — tried, in other words, to eliminate all potential medical and psychological causes for the person's behavior.

If all of that has occurred, he then tries to figure out why the person might have been possessed. "People don't just become possessed because they have a bad hair day," he said. "They become possessed because something evil has happened either transgenerationally or in their life." The next round of questions centers on what type of evil acts the possessed person has committed or have had committed to them, and how the person had dealt with those issues, if at all.

Next? "Once you know there was the right of an evil spirit to enter," Larson said, "then the question is whether they are the true host of a spirit or just somehow tormented. And to do that, you demand to speak to the spirit and call the spirit forth. And it either comes or it doesn't."

What really surprised me about Cruz' performance in the Republican primaries is that, to my knowledge, he was the first openly Christian Reconstructionist candidate to seek public office, and he was rejected by a substantial percentage of evangelical Christians. Many of them went for Trump, a Presbyterian who for the most part is not even running as a religious conservative.

Maybe it's just because Cruz is so darn unlikeable and clearly uncomfortable acting like a normal human being, but it could also imply that even the "evangelical" block of Christianity is not nearly as politically monolithic as some of their public statements make them sound. It seems that there are quite a few of them out there who are perfectly happy to reject Theocracy as a form of government, even if such a government would mean rule by their religion.