For some of us, the fact that so many Mormons (and now, members of Congress!) are caught up in outlandish conspiracy theories is another heavy brick on our collapsing shelf. How can these friends and neighbors, people who are supposedly our peers in discipleship, believe crackpot theories? And that thought leads to the next obvious question–if they are gullible enough to believe these things, how does that reflect on Mormonism as a belief system? The answer . . .
One of the podcasts I enjoy is called You’re Wrong About. One of the two podcasters is writing a book about the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, something I remember hearing all about as a teen. If you didn’t live through the 80s, I’ll recap. There was a huge moral panic in the country that Satan worshippers were in our midst, committing ritualistic killings, and also running pedophile rings in day care centers. In fact, when I got to Utah to attend BYU, I was warned that there were Satan worshippers that did ceremonies and sacrifices near the Capitol building in Salt Lake. Don’t go there after dark, they said. It could be anybody, they whispered.
The thing about the Satanic Panic is that it was widespread, it happened when the country was becoming more conservative in reaction to the “free love” 70s and rising equality of the sexes, and it was also built on a foundation of conservative hysteria. There are several reasons that this conspiracy theory got legs:
Although kids have been sexually abused since the dawn of time, prior to this time, kids were considered unreliable witnesses. You may be familiar with the phrase, “Children should be seen and not heard.” Kids were generally not listened to, and their testimony of events was at best dismissively laughed at by wiser adults who steered them in more socially acceptable directions. I know for those raised in the helicopter / co-sleeping parenting era, this will sound like madness, but go back and watch an episode of Father Knows Best. It’s called that for a reason, and it isn’t because the kids had any say in how things were run. In the 1980s, for the first time in a long time, children were beginning to be listened to, with legal and criminal consequences, and unfortunately, authority figures were unaware how much they influenced the testimony children gave. Children were highly suggestible, and they sought the approval of the authority figures who were trying to ascertain what had happened. Children involved in giving testimony found that adults got more excited the more outlandish their stories were. They were very unreliable witnesses, but when they said they saw Satan worshippers eating poop and making them drink blood, by golly, those adults took note!
There was a perception that the nuclear family was the backbone of society, and that any threat to it was dangerous. What could be more threatening than moms returning to work (leaving their kids with indifferent day care centers) or the absolutely horrifying idea of dads, who are there to protect their children, committing sexual abuse against their precious little ones? Enter, the Satanic Panic which neatly killed two birds with one stone. Rather than facing the fact that some kids were victims of patriarchal incest [1] or that day care might provide valuable social interaction to children, or that women might also have ambitions, hopes and dreams outside the home, or that women shouldn’t be financially dependent on husbands that might terrorize and beat them, the Satanic Panic instead took all the heat off fathers and placed it back on working women and the day care centers that made it possible for them to work, where the “real” evil was, the one that threatened the patriarchy anyway.
If you scratch away at the claims of those who said they had unearthed or witnessed ritual Satanic sex orgies, you invariably found . . . Evangelical Christians.
“To right-wing Christian fundamentalists steeped in lore about devils and stewing with hostility toward public child care, it was hard not to embrace the notion of Satan infiltrating day-care centers.“
Debbie Nathan, author of Satan’s Silence
The Satanic Panic resulted in many individuals being sentenced to decades-long prison terms, some of whom are literally still imprisoned. You can read more about it here. It is also the backstory behind an excellent novel I read two years ago by Gillian Flynn called Dark Places.
The story of the Satanic Panic sounds a lot like two other American “Satanic Panics”: the Salem Witch Trials, and QAnon. About six months ago, I met up with some women from my last ward for a socially distant lunch. As we were getting ready to leave, one of them said in her best gossipy voice, “Oh my gosh, have you guys seen this Wayfair story?!” I hadn’t, so I immediately Googled it while she continued, explaining that people were purchasing cabinets on Wayfair, but it was really child sex trafficking. Like you ordered a cabinet named Alysha, but it was really a child named Alysha, and that’s why the cabinets were $10,000. I found absolutely nothing about this story credible, and I immediately said so. “That’s ridiculous. If you are trafficking children, you can’t advertise them to the general public. If a child is delivered when you were expecting expensive cabinets, the jig is up.” Then I showed that the first ten hits I had from Google explained why it was just a bizarre conspiracy theory, not based in truth.
This rumor was similar to Pizzagate, the 2016 conspiracy theory that Democrats, particularly Hillary Clinton, were trafficking children out of the basement of a Pizza restaurant in Washington D.C. This panic came to a head when 28-year old North Carolinian Edgar Maddison stormed the restaurant and fired three rounds into the restaurant, demanding access to the basement to free the children. Since the restaurant had no basement, he pulled open doors and cabinets, hoping to disprove the owner’s claims, but ultimately, he was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon. This conspiracy theory about child sex trafficking was resurrected in 2020 by QAnon during the run-up to the election as a way to galvanize alt-right voters by convincing them that Democrats were involved in a pedophile ring (and apparently starting forest fires with Jewish space lasers). Whether it’s QAnon, the Satanic Panic, or the Salem Witch Trials, it always seems to be the same thing, over and over. Save the innocent children from our Satan-serving enemies, and anything goes when it comes to fighting this imaginary threat because IT’S A WAR! ON SATAN!
These panics all share the following themes:
- Heroic Evangelicals / religious fanatics who are “chosen”
- Protecting innocent children
- Real, physical Satanic danger
And when you look just a little bit closer, you see the unseen hand of these forces:
- Patriarchy protecting patriarchy
- Opportunists profiting from the panic
- The justification of lies and violence by the first two groups
- Casualties among the marginalized in society
It bolsters people’s faith in the unseen when they (as a community) all agree to start seeing it everywhere. These types of panics rally people around their own heroism, literally fighting the forces of evil, and allow them to overlook the fact that they are 100% doing wrong and immoral things. In the case of Salem, Evangelical Puritans were committing genocide, enslaving natives, beating wives, hiding sexual secrets (in the domestic sphere), and so on. In our modern era, we have a huge wealth gap, and conservatives (particularly Evangelical Christians) have an outsize representation in our voting and government, thanks to the electoral college, the urbanization of the US, and how the Senate is comprised. These conservative groups also have a poor track record on race, LGBT, and women.
Panics also provide an easy vehicle to target those you want to oust from the community by connecting them to these “unseen” dark forces that you & your network have suddenly starting seeing everywhere. [2] In Salem, most who were targeted were already on the fringes of society: friendless widows, cantankerous Cory Giles, slaves, natives, and others who lacked community support and patriarchal protection. It’s one reason so many women are targeted as witches. Throughout history, women, particularly once they are no longer fertile, are disposable to a patriarchal society. There’s a reason most “witches” are depicted as old crones. They are the most useless, valueless humans in a patriarchal society. If they have no male protection, they are viewed with particular suspicion, literally outside of the power structure.
Opportunists in the community very quickly see the cash cow and power grab potential of these types of panics. It becomes a big business. Cotton Mather literally would have been a nobody if not for this garbage. He wasn’t very good at the things he was supposed to be good at. This was his “niche,” and it’s pretty hard to disprove someone’s expertise in an area where they are just making crap up. In the wake of the Salem trials, two of the girls who had “identified” witches in Salem took their act on the road, identifying witches in neighboring communities for money until the state’s judiciary finally put a stop to it.
When I was 15, I attended a big Youth Conference that included guest speaker Lynn Bryson. He did his level best to terrify all of us by explaining that our albums contained Satanic messages that could be heard if you played them backwards (I’m not sure how back-masking was supposed to turn us into Satanists, since we listened to the music played normally, but that was implied).[3] He also explained that Satan was real, and that he was listening to everything we said and did and we were attracting him if we listened to hard rock, like Pokemon to incense. My friend Julie and I laughed through the whole presentation because she was wearing a Led Zeppelin hat, and he spent at least fifteen minutes breaking down why Stairway to Heaven was diabolical. At the end of the presentation, to absolutely nobody’s surprise, came the sales pitch; he was coincidentally selling his own Satan-repellent music in the lobby as we left. Even at 15, I saw that coming a mile off. I made mental note of my peers that clustered around his table trying to buy his “Church-approved” terrible music. Anyone that gullible was probably not someone I wanted to be friends with.
Still, the rest of that Youth Conference, our entire Young Women (and one of our leaders) spent the next several days freaking each other out with creepy pronouncements that there was “badness” we could sense all around us. We even got our YW leader to try to contact the dead, as she said she could sense spirits. Obviously, as with the Salem trials, there’s nothing quite so appealing to teenage girls living in a rural religious existence as pretending to be able to sense evils around them. For years, we would tease each other by seizing up, staring ahead blankly, intoning, “There is badness.” As one of my friends put it menacingly, tired of being frightened at every snapping twig on one camp-out in the woods, “You’re gonna see some badness all right if you don’t quit it!”
- Do you think Mormons are equally susceptible to these Satanic panics or is it something that leaks into Mormonism from Evangelicals?
- What percent of your Mormon friends believe these types of things?
- Do you have recollections of these types of panics within your years in the Church?
Discuss.
[1] Or as Miracle of Forgiveness would have it, promiscuous, seductresses who committed the sin next to murder.
[2]Cory Giles may have had the best “last words” of all time, but he was a crotchety curmudgeon with a temper who had beaten a mentally challenged servant to death, which despite their mostly terrible beliefs, his Puritan neighbors didn’t think was cool.
[3] I mean, aside from playing “Another One Bites the Dust” backwards to hear the voice say “It’s time to smoke marijuana.” Obviously.
**For another great article about Mormons and belief in witches, read this by our own Dave B.
Wheat & Tares 
Great post. I’ll probably repeat some things I’ve written before on the subject.
I think Mormons are even more susceptible to these sorts of things than Evangelicals, mainly because a prominent feature of Mormonism (so prominent that Mormonism could not exist without it) is the subjective validation of supposedly objective “truths”. From its beginnings with Joseph Smith, Mormonism embraces exactly the kinds of logical disconnects that universalize individual feelings or spiritual experiences. Indeed, we are taught that we must have our own personal spiritual experiences in order to validate and ratify Smith’s truth claims. One can see how easily such a paradigm leads to conspiracy thinking: we “feel” that something is true (and conspiracy stories and conspiracy websites, etc. are designed with the precise intent of arousing and appealing to feelings) and then, as happens in, say, fast and testimony meeting, we get our feelings validated by others who are members of the same community and somehow a thing becomes true because 1) you’ve “felt” it and 2) a few other people who think just like you do “verify” the truth of that thing and presto, it’s true!
Such a paradigm lends itself most easily to conspiracy beliefs and theories. And such a paradigm also circumvents any attempts at logic and reason because that’s what it’s designed to do. You can literally take any idea or premise or problem and quite easily step around any kind of structured argument based on facts and empirical observations. This means that all you need to make something “true” is your feelings and a few other people who validate those feelings by sharing their own similar feelings. It pains me to say this, because I had such high hopes for Mormonism when I joined the church 35 years ago, but this not a bug, it’s a feature. So much of our church’s structure, intent and teachings seem purposely designed to encourage people to abandon reason and logic and to embrace feelings instead. I’m all for feelings and emotions because indeed, they make life worth living; but just because I love the song “Bohemian Rhapsody” doesn’t mean that I believe Scaramouche actually did the fandango.
And as far as my fellow ward members, I’d say at least 50 percent are down the conspiracy rabbit hole. And again, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, all of Mormonism is really a conspiracy theory. And Smith’s own words and initial followers demonstrate this. Ask any reasonable question and you get a conspiracy answer: Why can’t everyone see the golden plates? Because that would mean you wouldn’t need to have faith. What’s up with Joseph and Fanny Alger? Oh, Cowdery was bitter and an unreliable witness. Fake news. What’s up with the Kinderhook plates? Well, someone else wrote down Joseph’s response, so we don’t have Joseph’s own word, so therefore he wasn’t fooled by fake plates. And on and on. And it pains me to say this as well, but I’m not sure the church wants its members to be able to distinguish the difference between subjective responses and objective truth; it sort of depends on its members (and its membership numbers) conflating those two things. Certainly, there are points where we are told to use our minds and “study things out” in them, but there’s an assumption built in that employing reason will lead us to deep spiritual (uniquely Mormon) truths and I’m not sure that reason always leads us in that direction.
I sometimes feel that attributing baseless conspiracy theories to a large percentage of LDS believers (or conservatives in general) is the equivalent of conservatives attributing a large or majority number of liberals as Russian communist sympathizers. It’s tempting, but both are largely distorted views in the end. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist at some level, but I know more conservative friends disavowing QAnon than embracing it. It makes it difficult to guess a percentage.
Additionally, that’s not to say none of the panic of present and past has any basis in reality. As a 5th grader in the early 90s, my friend and I rode our bikes a mile or two outside the city (something I don’t think I’d ever let my kids at that age do today). As we were getting ready to go over a hill, we saw two teenagers (about 14 or 15) coming over the hill the opposite direction, booking it and looking genuinely scared. Despite their fright, they stopped briefly to tell us they’d encountered devil worshipers not that far away, and had been pursued, at least initially. Their warning was enough for us to turn around as well. Justifiably skeptical, my dad approached the county sheriff on the subject, who happened to be in our ward. He confirmed it was a problem they were trying to get a handle on. Despite the reality of the events, none of it was ever mentioned in Church or in excess social circles, and I don’t make that story a regular conversation topic.
I don’t think I ever experienced “Satan Panic” as outlined in the OP, but the reality of Satan wasn’t downplayed either. Mostly it was just encouragement to live righteously and see the benefits of such living.
Do you think Mormons are equally susceptible to these Satanic panics? Choices: It’s a Mormon thing; it’s an Evangelical and conservative religion thing; it’s religion in general that makes people think this way; or it’s just human nature to often think in conspiracy theories. And the answer is: It’s largely human nature. I think it’s all closely related to scapegoating, which is a much more general aspect of human behavior and thinking. The company project fails, management looks for a scapegoat (it certainly wasn’t management’s fault). The team has a losing season, get a new OC or trade the quarterback (it certainly wasn’t the head coach’s fault). A Church initiative or doctrine fails, blame the members or blame Satan (it certainly wasn’t the leadership’s fault). Same game, different vocabulary.
I think it seems worse to us in Mormonism because of the cringe factor. Someone thinks a Jewish space laser causes forest fires, well that’s just anti-Semitism, nothing new. Some carries a Bible while storming the Capitol while shouting about the Antichrists in Congress, okay, we all know what an unhinged biblical fundamentalist sound like and it’s all some twisted reading of Revelation. But some guy marches around with the Title of Liberty on a flagpole while parading around the Capitol, and we Mormons roll our eyes and slink down low in our chairs. But again, it’s all the same cup of tea.
What percent of your Mormon friends believe these types of things? At least half. It’s because the Church does pretty much nothing to counteract or dismiss all this wacko thinking. And so many Mormon wackos rely on Ezra Taft Benson writings and speeches for their inspiration. The Church is never going to formally repudiate Benson, so it will always be a problem within the Church.
Do you have recollections? Not contemporaneously. I think it was more of a Utah thing. I learned about it years later reading the Pace Memo. But we have to acknowledge that Satan is such a central and essential feature of LDS doctrine and thinking. Some variation of a Satan explanation is always going to pop up in LDS discourse. It’s the default explanation for why anything goes wrong. Lucifer is the great Enemy of Accountability in the Church.
I really question the statements here that 50% of one’s Mormon friends believe in this conspiracy stuff. You’re basically saying that every other Mormon you run into believes in this stuff? I highly doubt it. There’s a fringe out there that believes all the crazy QAnon material. But I wonder if the Internet makes it appear more prominent than it is. Social media tends to blow everything up. Everyone goes all nuclear all the time. But I don’t think 50% of the folks you run into at church are into this stuff.
The Mormon Church was founded on conspiracy theories. God told Joseph in the First Vision that all professors of religious creeds were “corrupt,” and the “powers of darkness” combined against Joseph to keep him from telling his story. Don’t try to re-translate the lost 116 pages, because evil men have secretly conspired to alter the translation with a cunning plan. We don’t drink alcohol, coffee, or tea “[i]n consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days.” And the keystone of our religion, written for our day, warns about the systemic, civilization-ending dangers of a band of robbers whose organization was “based on secrecy and satanic oaths.” So yes, I think Mormons are especially susceptible to conspiracy theories.
On your opening point, my faith crisis began before Trumpism, but Trumpism (more precisely, the support and in some cases, near worship of Trump) by my fellow Christians put it into overdrive. If there was ever hope of a return to faith, this past year, with not just the Trump/Captain Moroni insanity, but the COVID denial and then the election fraud conspiracy, has ended any such hope. We are a people that claim to have privileged access to a member of the Godhead, entitled to his constant companionship to help us discern light and truth. And yet a huge majority of this select, privileged group believes insane lies. As you say, not a good look.
josh h: It isn’t 50 percent of my Mormon friends, it’s 50 percent of my ward. Big difference. And no, I haven’t run a bunch of hard data, but judging by conversations I’ve heard at church, social media posts and personal conversations I’ve had with a number of ward members, 50 percent really seems about right. Also, I didn’t distinguish between QAnon true believers and folks who thought the election was rigged. They’re both conspiracy theories, but one is slightly less absurd than the other. And at least in my ward, the theorists come from all sorts of backgrounds and classes, making me think that Rob’s assertions are correct; Mormons in general are especially susceptible to conspiracy theories.
The 1980s also featured “milk carton kids” and “stranger danger” warnings. As it turned out, most of the missing children had been taken away by noncustodial parents. The milk carton program was gradually replaced by “amber alerts.”
Brother Sky: If you are correct, I’ll have one more big reason to keep my distance. Most of the Church’s truth claims seem dubious to me. So I already struggle with a crisis of trust (NOT a faith crisis). But if I look around and perceive that 50%+ of my fellow members are into the QAnon / stolen election narrative, it’s going to be even harder to come back.
And this is coming from a former hard core TBM / Ronald Reagan conservative.
Rob hits it on the head. The whole belief pyramid has as its base outlandishly weird tales that people swear are true (and cry in Fast and Testimony when they recount for us how true they are). Have you ever tried really explaining polygamy with a 14 year old girl against her will while the original wife is not even told of the multiple marriages? Or even things like the word of wisdom, or what goes on in the temple, etc etc?Mormons have centuries of training being told that false things are true. This whole last year has shocked my system, as I have seen absolutely faithful, modest, dyed-in-the-wool members chose conspiracy theories over any semblance of rational thought. I have seen many try to weave the Savior in to the mess, that’s when the real sadness sets in. Tough to hold your tongue then.
Wow, love this post. I had never heard or made the connection between women returning to work & the daycare Satan worshippers (I’m too young to remember personally but I’ve heard of it), but it makes SO much sense (a lot more sense than a bunch of Satan-worshipping daycare owners) and is so disturbing. I listened to someone the other day who suggested that QAnon is the new religion for right wingers for whom Mormonism has become too mainstream. Might be true.
-How many Mormons do I know are QAnoners? A handful, personally, who are vocal about it. And then quite a few others second-hand (like a sister’s sister-in-law, etc.). Another pretty large chunk who are not probably into the super insane stuff but who are peripheral to it with anti-mask sentiment, OUR obsession and scary second-hand stories about “traffickers” (all of which have very racist undertones), very Pro-Trump (it’s one thing for people to hold their nose and vote for him, but I think if you’re flying a Trump flag and wearing a MAGA hat, that’s pretty bought into Trumpism). So yeah, I personally would be surprised if it’s “half” of Mormons in Utah or Idaho are full-on into it but I would say a good chunk are “QAnon adjacent.” Probably depends a lot on your pocket of Mormonism. Most of my close personal Mormon associates voted for Biden so I am definitely in a weird bubble for Utah County.
@Brother Sky, bravo. Excellent points. Depressing points. Until the last few years, I never viewed the Church as anti-science or anti-intellectual; it always seemed actually very pro-critical thinking compared Evangelicals. But Covid + Trump + QAnon has me rethinking that conclusion.
@Rob, me too. My faith crisis has been 10+ years in the making, but 2016 put it into overdrive and the last year or so was just insane. Like, who are these people even???
I was still pretty young in the 1980s so the satanic panic largely escaped my awareness. But I did grow up hearing stories from my boomer mom about some of the crazy things she saw while attending BYU in the late 60s-early 70s. She had an acquaintance who was part of a group of students who got expelled for playing with a Ouija board. She also had a freshman roommate who experienced some kind of demonic possession late at night (which in hindsight, was most likely a harmless episode of sleep paralysis). Nonetheless, their bishop was summoned to give a blessing and “cast out the evil spirits”. Satan was working overtime to try and thwart the righteous purposes of the Lord’s University during those wicked times, she would say. These stories always came with stern warnings not to go dabbling in the occult–stay away from tarot cards, palm readers, heavy metal music and other things that “invite the spirit of evil”. She was most certainly caught up in the panic, and I think the years of erosion to her critical thinking skills helped turn her into the hardcore Trumper she is today (sigh).
This reminds me of another phenomenon I’ve observed. I’ve had friends and relatives who served missions in places like Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, who all have stories of being called upon to use their priesthood authority to “cast out evil spirits”, or at least witnessed a companion perform such an ordinance. But my friends who served in the U.S., Canada or Europe have had no such experiences, and when asked if they had, look at you like you have a third eye on your face. I know there is a cultural component to this, but I wonder if impressionable young missionaries being asked to exorcise demons (and truly believing in the efficacy of their action) has an affect on their future susceptibility to get sucked into conspiracy thinking.
@Jack Hughes, that is an interesting point about missionaries being asked to use their priesthood authority to “cast out devils.” I witnessed this in my mission in Latin America. In one town that I served in, a very young teenage girl who had been pimped out by her own mother was experiencing psychotic episodes (which was quite understandable considering what she had gone through) and the Elders gave her a special casting-out-devils priesthood blessing. They were very dismayed to learn that a few days later she visited a local witch doctor, like that undid the blessing that they had given. I believe that what the poor girl needed more than anything was competent therapy, but she was never going to get that in that remote town. I do wonder now, decades later, if the Elders who blessed her have reconsidered what they did. I think it’s likely that if they still believe the child was possessed by devils and not just severely traumatized by other peoples’ actions, they are pretty likely to believe QAnon stuff too.
Equally susceptible to ‘satanic panic”? No, Mormons are more so because they believe “the adversary” is always trying to ruin their lives. In that sense, church members may never reach McMartin preschool level panic, but they maintain a low-grade concern most of the time.
Mormons are just as susceptible as evangelicals for sure.
I know only a few Mormon friends who believe in these Satanic panics. But most my Mormon friends (ones that I’m close to) are liberals or at least intellectuals. The Mormon in my social circle are most likely outliers in the world of Mormonism.
I have vivid memories of Satan panics growing up for sure. Rock music was evil because it would make you worship Satan somehow. I remember my mom sitting me down at a young age and sternly forbidding me from listening to rock music and telling me that my cousin (who lived in the small Utah town of Salina) had lost his way and that she was sure it was largely due to the music he was listening to. My mom’s superstition about music had the opposite effect on me. It gave rock music an aura of the forbidden about it and made it really good to listen to.
I think that the 50% is too high. But granted it seems that high because the nut jobs are louder and feel quite free to send all kinds of videos about conspiracy theories, and anti vax stuff, and the like, while the sane people are more reserved about broadcasting their political opinions. So, your Facebook feed can be crammed ful of conspiracy theories, but when you really look, they all come from the same three people. We sane people seem to understand that the old etiquette rule about not discussing religion or politics at the dinner table still applies to Facebook. It is back to how the John Birch Society members could talk openly in church, but the evil democrats couldn’t. It wasn’t that there were that many who were members of JBS, just that they felt they were right and that everyone agreed with them, so they felt free to talk about it in church.
I remember the Satanic Panic! While I was attending BYU, I was warned about some boarded-up building in Provo that the Satanists frequented. I have no doubt the Satanic symbols were graffitied on the walls — somebody was messing with people!
I have to admit, the fact that SO many fellow congregants believe in crazy, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories makes me wonder if we actually have the same sort of spiritual foundations to our testimonies. Our fundamental religious beliefs are generally grounded in what others have told us, plus some personal spiritual experiences which we interpret through the lens of both what others have told us and our personal desires. I have had people look me in the eye and tell me they’ve had personal spiritual witnesses a) that the church isn’t true, or b) that Trump was chosen by God to lead our country through a particularly dangerous time. In both cases, these were members/past members of the church, and spoke about the spiritual nature of their conviction the same way you might hear it from the pulpit on fast Sunday.
I can see that if you’ve grown up looking to avoid Satan, you can find him anywhere and blame him for everything. Just as if you’re a feminist, you can find the patriarchy everywhere and blame it for everything. If your bias and conviction is so established, it’s easy to connect dots that others can’t see, and it’s easy to blame them for not being properly educated if they can’t see it. I think that might be why humility is so emphasized in the scriptures even when we don’t see a whole lot of it.
@Martin the only difference is patriarchy actually is literally everywhere and a study of history shows that. Unlike Satan …
@Elisa So I’ve been told. I see the patriarchy in many things. But I still don’t see everything I’ve been told I should see. So I’ve been told to go educate myself.
And incidentally, Satan’s everywhere too. I’ve been pointed to some of his handiwork, and I actually believe I’ve seen some of it. But I still don’t see everything they’ve told me I should see. And guess what they tell me to do? You got it — go educate myself.
If I only knew what they know, whether it be history or the “true facts” or whatever, I’d see things their way. That’s what they tell me.
The reality is that our first-hand knowledge is extremely limited. So we have to trust other people. We listen to the ones we think are most trustworthy (or the ones who say things we like) and try to corroborate what they say with what others say or write. And the more voices we hear that say the same things, the more “evidence” we think we have. So, if you live in an echo chamber with a lot of people saying the same things, the more likely you are to believe those things. That’s how we all are. When we have to question our sanity is when our first hand experience genuinely contradicts what “they’ve” been telling us, and we choose to believe them anyway.
@Martin I agree that it is important to ask ourselves what things *we* might be believing despite evidence to the contrary or simply because it fits our feelings rather than always looking outside ourselves and calling everyone else crazy.
That said, I still take issue with a comparison between patriarchy and Satan. You can read actual laws from across history and around the world that treat women as property and deny them rights. You can read actual scriptures that say women shouldn’t speak (and you can also notice the near-total absence of women from those scriptures). You can look at our political institutions and the sheer numbers of men vs. women. You can look at our wealth distribution and how few women crack the top. You can look at the Ensign and confirm, quite readily, the existence of “the patriarchy.” And, while this would indeed take listening to other people’s accounts instead of relying on your first-hand knowledge, you could definitely listen to those first-hand accounts of harms women (and men) have experienced as a result of patriarchy.
I think I’m with you in that I imagine there are plenty of things people might blame on “patriarchy” that I think probably aren’t all that connected. But there are observable facts substantiating the historical and present existence and impact of patriarchy — the question is a matter of degree. Comparing people who identify patriarchy to people who identify daycare Satanists and Oprah & Obama’s sex worshipping cabals is just a bad comparison.
About 5 months ago, I casually mentioned to my niece that Ellen DeGeneres appeared to be in trouble. Former employees and some audience members were reporting that Ellen repeatedly treated them like crap and that it was a hostile work (and audience) environment. My niece immediately added that in addition to all that, Ellen was part of a child-trafficking group of Hollywood Professionals. Oprah was also included. Others, but I can’t remember who else she mentioned. The point was it went from Ellen not being a very nice person on set to her being a part of a child-trafficking ring. The Q-Anon nonsense took over. I was shocked. My niece is extremely outgoing and one of my favorite people. I was shocked that she “bit the apple”. Months later she finally settled down and backed off the Q-Anon crap. It still shocked me.
When I was in Young Women’s (many moons ago) (how about in the early 70’s), I took The Beatles Album, Abbey Road, to Mutual. I don’t remember why. Maybe the teacher asked us to bring music to play? Anyway, I digress. We were listening to the album. Fast forward to when the Young Women’s President enters the room with a sad, sad look on her face. Tears welled up in her eyes. She gave us a “discussion” on the dangers of words in music and that Satan was at the forefront. She specifically singled out, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” from the album. Her dramatic words included that we were letting Satan take over by listening to songs that included violence. The words, in part, “Bang Bang Maxwell’s Silver Hammer Came Down Upon Her Head”. Funny, I just looked up the lyrics to the song to make sure that I got them right. Coincidentally, the lady in the song who met the hammer’s demise was named “Joan”. That was the name of our Young Women’s leader, Joan. So just now I’m wondering if that is why it bothered her so much. Anyway, again I digress. I’m sure I eye-rolled which didn’t help her situation. Luckily, when I discussed it with my Mom, she did the same sort of eye-roll and said to ignore poor Joan.
I know I’m jumping around, but things keep coming to mind. I have attempted to lessen my time on social media. However, last week. There was one day when the stock market dropped 700 points. Two of my Trump-lovin’ neighbors immediately posted on FB. Then a few others joined in. Some of the comments included, “Signs of the Times” (a standard LDS line) and “The Lord is at the helm”. Another eye-roll by me.
Martin: Patriarchy and systemic racism (I’ll just assume here that you also would like to imagine that is fictional or over-attributed) are not exactly “conspiracies” or “conspiracy theories” so much as status quo norms that need to be challenged to make the world a better place. Yes, at times, white men have conspired to prevent women from owning property (which was the condition for a lot of western history, something that is still paying dividends) or to create Jim Crow laws and other voter suppression to prevent people of color from having a voice in society, but it’s not conspiracy on par with good/evil and Jewish space lasers involving a secret cabal of Devil worshippers. It’s only conspiracy in that some people have worked to maintain their own privilege at the expense of others. It’s people caring more about themselves than others.
That’s not at all what happened in the Satanic Panics described. People aren’t being accused of hoarding privilege and wealth or making entire races or sexes financially dependent. They are being accused of outlandish nefarious acts that have no basis in reality and no evidence whatsoever. In fact, the lack of evidence IS the evidence because they must be really powerful to be able to hide the evidence.
Your comment does you no credit aside from making you look like someone willing to ignore the real societal harms that exist because it’s more convenient than trying to address them or care about them. Addressing these problems isn’t easy and will take a lot of time and will. One similarity: discovering rampant sexism, racism and homophobia in our congregations is as distressing as finding Q-Anon believers, and in my experience, the same groups of people often embrace both.
I have also been told by conservatives that there’s no systemic racism because Obama was elected. That’s not only ridiculous but gross. The same people who said that also replied to George Floyd’s murder that “Blue lives matter.” So they stand with the cops who murdered him. I’ve heard that Mormons are the only religion that allow women to be leaders, which is completely false, and the way women are leaders in the Church is not at all on par with the way male leadership works. Women are never paid and always temporary. Women are never put in positions of authority over men except in the children’s organization. Only recently were women again allowed to do any financial audits.
@Angela C’s comment “I’ve heard that Mormons are the only religion that allow women to be leaders, which is completely false, and the way women are leaders in the Church is not at all on par with the way male leadership works.”
So true. Relief Society members have no say in who their Relief Society presidents are at local, stake, and churchwide levels (other than the ability to object during a sustaining, but even that would likely not lead to anything other than an ostracizing of the person objecting).
Can we really say it’s a women’s organization when the most crucial decisions about leadership are made solely by men?
Angela C: I never said the patriarchy was fictional, but I do believe that it is over-attributed. I agree that the Satanic Panic was pure nonsense (ie., that there were Satanists sacrificing goats in boarded up buildings or ritualistic sexual abuse of children). So I agree these two things are not equivalent. But that doesn’t mean that feminists aren’t susceptible to making up nonsense. Just because the patriarchy exists doesn’t mean that it is responsible for everything feminists attribute to it.
Look at your own language:
“And when you look just a little bit closer, you see the unseen hand of these forces: Patriarchy protecting patriarchy….”
and then you go right back to decrying the conspiracists:
“It bolsters people’s faith in the unseen when they (as a community) all agree to start seeing it everywhere”.
You honestly don’t see the irony here? No, of course you don’t, because the patriarchy protecting the patriarchy is as clear as day to you. It’s everywhere. There couldn’t be a conspiracy without it, right? It was literally the first thing on your list.
That was really my only point — everybody, when sufficiently steeped in a worldview or immersed in an echo chamber can end up with a distorted view of reality. So yes, I believe it is just as easy for feminists (and anti-racists) to see the patriarchy (or discrimination) where it isn’t.
And before you prove to me how justified you were to put “patriarchy protecting patriarchy” at the top of your list, let me give you an example of why it is so important to get reality right. I personally feel that we have a problem in our country with how policing is done. It’s a fundamental problem, and it doesn’t just manifest in the way blacks are treated — cops can be abusive towards anyone they think less of, such as drug users and the mentally ill. If every time the police abuse a black person we’re going to blame it on racism, we’ll immediately have people say “That wasn’t racism” and we have a war between whose life matters more, black or blue. It’s terrible, because fundamental changes can be made that can address the issue. You can’t legislate away racism — you can only legislate the way it can be legally manifest. We’re constantly told the police are abusing black people more than whites. I think this is true. But the problem is that now every time a black person is abused by cops, it gets interpreted as racism. Was Breonna Taylor killed because she was black? I don’t know, but I think the way that warrant was served, in a state with a “stand your ground law” was absolutely nuts (I mean, the culture of the place accepts that you shoot someone breaking into your house). What would be better to investigate, whether the police serve the warrant that way on everybody (white or black), or whether there are more cases where serving a warrant this way resulted in tragedy, be the suspects white or mentally ill. If you opt for the first, and you can’t find systemic racism, you’ve missed your opportunity to improve policing. The influence of police unions needs to be reduced. Police chiefs need to be able to fire bad cops, and those bad cops shouldn’t be hired elsewhere. These fundamental changes need to be made, but if you have a group resisting them because “there wasn’t racism”, it makes it harder to get it done. Don’t get me wrong, I acknowledge that people like me have been made more aware of policing problems because of the cries about racism. But I also know people are resisting change because they’re convinced racism wasn’t involved (and this can include black cops). Getting the real problem right matters.
And so now, I’m going to say, with a great deal of irony, I do believe racism comes from Satan (his unseen hand, and all that 😉 .
Why doesn’t the Church or Pres. Nelson just simply tell everyone what the current deception is and don’t fall for it?
@mez such a good point! Thought that was what prophets were for …
I guess they think the great deception is that we should love everyone (including LGBTQ folks) no matter what, and that we are good enough without checking all their boxes.
Child of the 80″s? – Check
Told Heavy Metal Music is of the devil? – Check
Prohibition on playing Dungeons and Dragons? – Check
Handed a copy of “None Dare Call It Conspiracy” at 14 yrs old? – Check
Mom yelling “just because they teach you about evolution doesn’t mean you should believe it!” as I walked out the door for my first day of junior high school? – Check
The irony here is that for those who cling to ETB’s quotes about socialism and JBS, ETB specifically stated that “Second: The living prophet is more vital to us than the Standard Works…
“Third: The living prophet is more important to us than a dead prophet…
“Beware of those who would set up the dead prophets against the living prophets, for the living prophets always take precedence.”
Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet, President Ezra Taft Benson,Of the Quorum of the Twelve
(Address given Tuesday, February 26, 1980 at Brigham Young University)
I have never believed in the personage of a devil. For me, evil is merely the absence of good. Like cold is the absence of heat. The War in Heaven is merely folklore. What purpose does a devil serve in a religion? Christ is enough. Love God and neighbor. And the only way I know to serve God is by loving my neighbor. Why complicate things?
In the 60’s and 70’s, Satan running amok was definitely a big part of PH and YM teaching. Our MTC teachers had a defense against the dark arts class one day.
In the 80’s I was hearing lots of stories about abandoned houses with pentagrams and rodent bones. One where people claimed there were baby bones in a burned out structure in a field. I checked that out and was relieved to see a KFC bucket in the corner. One particularly zealous member of the EQ (I was president) wanted me t0 go with him to cast out Satan from one of these houses nearby. He had already put a picture of Jesus up on the wall to get the ball rolling. I told him that a residential exorcism was not a sufficient defense to a criminal trespass charge.
That stuff seemed to die down for a long while. I have noticed a real uptick in GC talks on Satan’s influence in recent years. I’m really not a fan of that. It is an obvious scare tactic and also serves to give an excuse to shift personal responsibility to a supernatural force.
About rock music. I’ve always wondered if it was so evil because that generation of adults (mostly the Silent Generation) didn’t listen to it. I went to many a youth fireside about the evils of rock music and the satanic messages in the songs. I’ve asked my late millennial children if they ever had similar firesides. The answer is No. And why is this? I believe that it’s because their adult leaders listen to rock music themselves. In fact, my children’s musical tastes are highly influenced by what my husband and I listened and listen to. We are always sharing new music with our children. As a family we will all go to hell together. Haha.