When a theologically eccentric person like pastor and self-described “prophet” like Robin Bullock starts talking about demons, it’s not much of a surprise. As Right Wing Watch recently noted, the Alabama preacher used a recent
church service to warn that President Joe Biden is under possession by a demonic “serpent spirit” that manifests itself by giving the president “slotted pupils.”
Bullock also claims to have heard Biden speaking in a “demonic voice,” growling threats aimed at Donald Trump. As demons are wont to do, I guess.
It’s easy enough to dismiss Bullock as a religious weirdo with limited reach. What’s disturbing is when this sort of language seeps into the discussion on more mainstream right-wing media like Fox News or the New York Post.
Meet Voddie Baucham Jr., an expat pastor who recently returned to the United States to promote a new book and, not incidentally, to denounce Critical Race Theory as literally demonic. In a recent interview with the Daily Wire, and in his new book Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe Baucham talks about Critical Race Theory as a dark religion born out of the “demonic ideology” of Marxism. And when he says demonic, he means it. As he writes in Fault Lines,
I want this book to be a clarion call. I want to unmask the ideology of Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Intersectionality in hopes that those who have imbibed it can have the blinders removed from their eyes, and those who have bowed in the face of it can stand up, take courage, and “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) …
My goal is not to destroy, but to expose (Ephesians 5:11), warn (2 Timothy 3:15), and correct (2 Timothy 2:25) in hopes that “they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:26). And yes, I do mean to call these ideologies demonic.
When you think of your political opponents as followers ensnared by the literal devil into a “demonic” quasi-religion, there’s not much chance of any sort of rapprochement or even a cordial discussion. Baucham hides his extremism fairly well, speaking and writing in a civil tone. But he’s an extremist all the same.
Unfortunately, he’s an extremist who’s getting more than his share of attention from the right-wing press — and not only from obscure fundamentalist outlets. He’s been featured on Fox and Glenn Beck’s The Blaze as well as Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, one of the most persistently popular, er, “news” outlets on Facebook; he’s also regularly mentioned on FaithWire and Christianity Daily.
Hell Heck, he was even the featured speaker at a recent event held by the Heritage Foundation.
Meanwhle, his book tour seems to be going swimmingly; Fault Lines is the number one bestseller in Amazon’s Social Issues & Christianity category with more than 3000 mostly-rave reviews.
And Baucham isn’t just a religious extremist in sheep’s clothing; as Media Matters noted in a profile of him earlier this month, he also holds am assortment of backwards and bigoted views on a vast array of topics. He
pushes the antisemitic trope of “cultural Marxism,” insists on the importance of “virgin brides,” argues that women should not be vice presidential nominees, denies the existence of homosexuality, and claims the AIDS crisis was manipulated by the LGBTQ community for “pity.”
If you want to hear Baucham chat about the Frankfurt School with former Love-Connection-host-turned-far-right-bloviator Chuck Woolery, click here.
That’s not a sentence I ever expected I’d write. It’s possible the devil made me do it.
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Until now I had assumed the Miami condo collapse was due to seismic disturbances. After reading this post, however, I’m starting to wonder if it wasn’t caused by the shockwave generated from the collective facepalming of everyone disgusted at Pastor Baucham’s ignorance.
Wow, Voddie grew an Amish beard! That’s new.
It’s 2021 for f’s sake. How are people still denouncing their political opponents as literally demonic?
@Mexican Hot Chocolate: With great ease, apparently.
@Mexican Hot Chocolate
Ignoring the ones which are jumping on the train for financial and/or political gain, because they don’t want to face personal accountability. They know that some of the things they do are not so good, and the only way to justify most of it is if there are no good options and their enemies (or “enemies” who are actually victims) are worse. Either they have been a bad person all along, or they’re fighting the good crusade against the forces of darkness, there’s no middle ground. (And once they’ve taken action beyond talk, or inspired others to take action, there really can be no middle ground.)
They really, really don’t want to believe that they’re a bad person, so the worse they act, the more they must be acting on God’s will, and any harm they do must be on people who are either consorting with demons or possessed by them. Must be, because God wouldn’t make them inflict great harm on innocents, or at least not for no reason, after all. Or alternately, if religion isn’t a major factor in their motivations, and the label of “demonic” is non-literal, then it must be because they’re becoming more moral, or other people are becoming less, or FOX News is awakening them to the reality of a world ruled by sinister cabals, etc. When somebody like this starts going over the top, it’s probably time to check on their family’s safety, if they have a family. Sometimes it’s a sign that they’ve been a bit abusive all along but have recently gone full monster. Or they might be (covertly) lashing out at a target which is outside their reach, like those evangelicals who irrationally focus their hate on celebrities like Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift.
And then on rare occasions you get a “prophet” who is mostly harmless, but has gained the “power” to see demons everywhere, usually in the form of fanged faces. These are a semi-common form of specific hallucination, and they probably should be getting medical attention. Hard to convince them of that when they see it as a gift from God, though.
There’s a lot of this demonic voice stuff going around. Hours after my father’s funeral, my first-born brother said to me that my third-born brother had come into my parents’ kitchen one morning — the very kitchen that he and I were in at that moment — and my father was there, speaking in a demonic voice. Although our father was not a great guy, I was still struggling with the fact of his death when my brother decided to tell me this. As it so happened, my third-born brother was in the same house that we were, and I could hear him approaching the kitchen. “Let’s ask him about this,” I said. So we did. He said it had never happened. Well, okay, then.
What I found most interesting about this bizarre exchange was that my first-born brother was completely unfazed by my third-born brother’s denial. It was as though he had thought that my other brother had said that our father had been a Red Sox fan — but it turned out that instead he had been a White Sox fan. Oh well. An easy mistake to make.
During that same conversation that same brother told me that our father was now burning in hell. It’s hard to know how to respond to this kind of remark. I did manage to say, “Don’t tell Mother.”
When I was young, this kind of talk freaked me out. Getting older has its advantages. Fundamentalist dogma still makes me very unhappy, but I don’t fall into a pit of fear and depression. A sense of humor helps too.
One thing I am thankful for in the UK is that if anyone is extremely religious it basically destroys their political credibility, of whatever stripe that may be. With the exception of the Archbishop of Canterbury maybe, but he’s mainly expected to keep his nose out.
@Lollypop : could say that for western Europe in general, with different degree I guess.
@Ohlmann
That’s true actually, although it’s never occurred to me before. It seems a pan-Western-European thing to be like “Hmm. Mentioning God a lot there. That’s suspicious”. Maybe all the witch/catholic/protestant burning and inquisitions put people off ardent religious zeal.
I believe that the number of young people who report themselves as having no religion continues to grow in the US. Religious extremists probably see this trend as an existential threat, and double down. Time is running out if they want to establish Gilead.
Demons don’t like Trump, either? I guess they’re not all bad.
Ah him… I first encountered his stuff when ‘When Cows and Kids Collide’ began her scathing review of Jasmin Baucham’s book ‘Joyfully at Home’. Jasmin is the daughter, and that book is all about why it’s vital that daughters be stay at home daughters, not do any job or training or college, and just patiently wait for their fathers to find them husbands. It’s a trip, I’ll tell you that much…
(https://whencowsandkidscollide.blogspot.com/search?q=Baucham)
But are they sex demons or the regular kind?
My first thought reading this article, “this guy lives alone with cats”. About page: “…I live alone with cats”