Let’s dig into the medieval-sounding Christian topics of spirit possession (a bad thing) and exorcism (a good thing). They stubbornly lurk at the edges of LDS belief. You won’t hear a talk about these topics in sacrament meeting — they are never an assigned topic — but they likely come up in an adult Sunday School class discussion every now and then, given the prominent place that exorcism plays in New Testament Gospel narratives. I’ll take three approaches here: (1) a quick review of New Testament narratives; (2) a few notes on LDS beliefs; and (3) prompting readers for their own views, which quite possibly align with neither of the first two.
What Happened in Mark: Jesus the Exorcist
Mark has four exorcism narratives. These carry unstated assumptions, common to Second Temple Judaism beliefs, that (1) there are evil spirits (sometimes termed “unclean spirits”) floating around; (2) that they can somehow manage to inhabit the bodies of regular humans; and (3) that they can sometimes be expelled by another human who somehow has the exorcising power.
Jews had a reputation in the Roman Empire as exorcists, but this was not an “official” power that you would access by a sacrifice at the Jerusalem temple or an appeal to a temple priest. It was sort of an off-the-books power, but this “folk doctrine” that some special persons had the power of exorcism was pervasive, as seen in Gospel exorcism narratives. Here are the four exorcisms that we find in the Book of Mark, which I’m sure you are familiar with but likely have not considered in any detail. I’m using the NRSV Updated Edition text, with bolding added to my pertinent comments.
- Mark 1:21-28: A man with an unclean spirit. Jesus is teaching, and “there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit,” so it sounds like possessed people are just walking around Galilee and, we assume, everywhere else. Jesus says, “Come out of him!” and, after complaining loudly, the unclean spirit does so. This was the first miracle in Mark, highlighting Jesus as Exorcist (or, more gently, highlighting the cosmic power of Jesus).
- Mark 5:1-20: A man possessed by many demons. Across the Sea of Galilee, in “the region of the Gerasenes,” Jesus and his disciples encounter a man possessed by demons who has been exiled from his town. Note the plural: apparently lots of evil spirits can inhabit the same body. Jesus chats with the evil spirits (speaking through the possessed man), then the expelled spirits jump out of the man and into a herd of swine, showing the belief that wandering spirits can inhabit animals as well. The man, now made whole, was told “Go home to your own people,” which oddly suggests the man was not a Jew (the Decapolis region he went off too was largely populated by Romans and Greeks, not primarily Jews).
- Mark 7:24-30: A Syro-Phoenician woman’s daughter. This short episode is set in Tyre, again outside Galilee. Jesus was trying to lay low here, but “a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit” found him and “begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.” As she was not a Jew, Jesus did so, but only reluctantly: “The demon has left your daughter.” Note that the possessed little girl was not present: this was exorcism at a distance.
- Mark 9:14-29: A boy with a deaf-mute spirit. Jesus and the Big Three come down the mountain from the Transfiguration episode and find the other disciples attempting but failing to heal (through exorcism) an afflicted boy. The boy’s father explains his plight: “Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak, and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid, and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.” After a dialogue, Jesus cries, “Come out of him, and never enter him again!”
Matthew and Luke, written later than Mark, offer exorcisms as well, but sort of downplay them. The Book of John, chronologically the last Gospel to be composed, features no exorcisms. This suggests that as the post-resurrection movement grew numerically and expanded geographically in the late first century CE, the exorcism narratives became less attractive. They were early Christianity’s version of “we don’t want to talk about that.” But they are there, quite prominent, in Mark, with what we might call the Jewish folk doctrine beliefs about spirit possession and exorcism on full display.
LDS Beliefs
You won’t find any systematic official discussion of LDS beliefs on these topics, at least I couldn’t. A Google search will bring up LDS blog and podcast discussions, not General Conference talks or link to LDS curriculum materials. So “LDS beliefs” on this topic are mostly “what LDS people believe” rather than what official materials tell us to believe. Apart from accepting the reality of spirit possession and the possibility of exorcism as seen in the Markan narratives above, there are examples in early LDS history of possession and exorcism. Add to that the temple teaching that there are hordes of evil spirits roaming to and fro upon the earth, seeking to possess the bodies of the faithful. So LDS certainly do believe in spirit possession.
Oddly, the whole topic receives pretty much zero coverage in current LDS General Conference talks and LDS curriculum materials. Modernly (late 20th and early 21st centuries) it is simply not talked about. Even with the thousands of personal examples shared on the Internet and social media of this or that LDS person’s LDS experience, I have never read an account of a bishop counseling a suffering LDS person that they are possessed by an evil spirit and are therefore in need of an LDS priesthood exorcism. Bishops refer people to LDS therapists, not LDS exorcists. “LDS priesthood exorcism” isn’t really a thing: there are ten “Other Ordinances and Blessings” listed in section 18.2 of the Handbook, but exorcism is not one of them. But if exorcism was an LDS thing, it would certainly be a priesthood thing.
So we have this really strange state of affairs. Spirit possession and exorcism are plainly affirmed in the New Testament and in official LDS history accounts, are certainly accepted and believed by current mainstream LDS members, but spirit possession and exorcism are also not at all part of current LDS preaching and practice. You simply don’t hear about it in church.
What we do get in official LDS discussion is a lot of talk about “the influence of Satan” that can apparently influence any one of us if we let our guard down. If someone is fully under the influence of Satan, that person is in a very bad place. The solution? Not exorcism. Instead, one can always exercise (perhaps not easily) one’s free agency to repent and live a good Mormon life again, turning away from the influence of Satan and instead listening to LDS guidance and embracing the influence of “the Spirit.” One could almost describe this process as self-exorcism. The idea that there are hordes of evil spirits around and that, if infected, we need to find an exorcist to expel them has been replaced by this simpler schema of “the influence of Satan” that sort of permeates mortal existence and our duty to avoid it or, if seduced, to turn away from it, aided by prayer and maybe even a priesthood blessing. Not an exorcism, a simple blessing.
So, dear readers, what do you think of all this? What do you make of the current LDS view that both strongly affirms spirit possession and exorcism (it’s in the Bible, it’s in LDS history) but also modernly completely avoids the topic? What’s your take?
- Spirits, schmirits, it’s all a bunch of baloney. There is no such thing as spirit possession or exorcism.
- Spirit possession was just the ancient description of physical or mental disease, epilepsy or mental illness. But Jesus did heal such people, using his cosmic healing power.
- Spirit possession was just the ancient description of physical or mental disease. Jesus healed such people by instant on-the-spot psychiatry, freeing their minds.
- Spirit possession is a real thing, even today in 2025, and therefore exorcism is a real possibility, even today in 2025. So is exorcism just an LDS priesthood power? Or, as in ancient times, are there “off the books” exorcists around who have this special exorcising power, whether LDS or not? If there’s something wrong in the neighborhood, who you gonna call?
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Wheat & Tares 
Not sure why you think we don’t hear about it at church. Certainly back in the 1990s it was spoken about; we were told of an exorcism happening, via priesthood blessing to an individual wandering into church off the street presenting somewhat deranged, and then immediately having to be repeated for a nearby individual who was subsequently apparently possessed. In the 80s when I was growing up, my father and a member of the bishopric were required to perform an exorcism at the home of a cousin. I never asked about the success or otherwise, as I picked up the information just by hearing conversations. In the 2000s one sister at church shared how she had prayed with a sister she visit taught, who was worried about a spirit in her home, for it to depart, and how she then felt it had gone home with her! Took a few days to clear apparently. In the 2010s a sister at church mentioned in the past she had asked priesthood leaders to perform an exorcism at the home of one of her family members.
I don’t think I have heard it mentioned very recently however.
Perhaps the reason we haven’t heard exorcisms mentioned in the past 20 years or so, is for the same reason Mormons are now told to have faith NOT to be healed. The Institution can never be wrong by that “logic”.
The “war in heaven” is a myth, and has perpetuated much pain and suffering. As Elaine Pagels has stated: “Your conflict with anybody is basically a conflict between good and evil, and you’re the good one and whoever you really don’t like is evil. You can’t negotiate with evil- you have to annihilate evil.”
I hear this rhetoric constantly today in politics as well as religion. I dislike it intensely! It serves no good purpose and promotes hatred, division, and violence! Not to mention it’s a tool for controlling, manipulating, and promoting shame and suicide.
https://youtu.be/42eoA2-kzO0? si=ZjKerdOsDEO6_wH4
The Concept of Hell- Dan McClellan
Elaine Pagels- The Origin of Satan
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My main experience with this comes from my mission in Italy. Devil-possessed people was a “thing” that got discussed semi-regularly. Missionaries are prone to believe all sorts of dumb stuff (too much enforced boredom, so it’s no wonder that “deep doctrine” gets so much play). We met a guy on a train once who could bug his eyes way out. He’d come right up to you and about a foot from your face, just bug his eyes out. Creepy AF. We thought he was possessed.
Now, I think it’s all just mental and/or physical illness.
Cultural context matters. Any close examination of psychological disorders reveals some pretty horrific stuff. Consider Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personalities), or extreme Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or extreme Autocannibalism or Apotemnophilia (yuck) would have brought charges of demonic possession from regular church members in the recent past.
I don’t recall ever hearing about exorcism in a Church setting, other than New Testament lessons when we read the stories that Dave B described. Everything I knew about demonic possession came from my dad reading “Jay’s Journal.” From wikipedia: “Jay’s Journal is a 1979 book that was published in a diary format. The book is presented as an autobiographical account of a depressed teenage boy who becomes involved with a Satanic group. After participating in several occult rituals, Jay believes he is being haunted by a demon named Raul.” Jay was a real person, a teenager who lived in Pleasant Grove, Utah, until he died by suicide. The book was debunked later. The purported author used a couple of his journal entries, and made up the rest.
I remember being cautioned against speaking too much of Satan, because if you talked about him too much, you would invite him in and have an evil experience. That might have come from my dad after he read Jay’s Journal though.
My opinion of the NT exorcisms are that the ‘possessed’ individuals had an illness such as epilepsy or a mental health disorder. I don’t believe that full and miraculous healings happened. The NT was written decades later, based on stories told orally for a generation or two. Jesus was undoubtedly kind to the afflicted person, and that likely calmed them down temporarily. I have no explanation for the exorcism-at-a-distance stories. Finding out that the NT was written so long after Jesus died, and was written by men who had never met Jesus, really made me a skeptic about a lot of New Testament miracles. Besides which, praying didn’t heal my mental health problems. Believing Jesus had healed other people really twisted my knickers, so I stopped believing anyone got healed. I feel better about it that way.
One place where I still here something taught from time to time in a way that gets pretty close to evil spirit possession is the First Vistion account of how Joseph Smith was “seized upon by some power” that caused him to be unable to speak and enveloped him in darkness. I still hear people at Church sometimes teach this as something that is either possession of Joseph by Satan or something not explicitly stated as such but that seems very close to that.
It’s not spiritual possession, but literal encounters with evil spirits (you can see them!) are still fairly frequently discussed in Church lessons due to the “handshake test” given in D&C 129.
I suspect that the legend of Jesus developed and evolved a great deal in the decades before our version of the Book of Mark appears. As the OP notes, exorcism was a power that the Jews unofficially admired. What are the early Christians going to tend to do if they’re trying to convert other Jews (and even Gentiles), who revere people who can exorcise evil spirts, to their new religion? Of course, the natural thing would be to tell ever more miraculous stories of Jesus doing just that. With no printing presses, no correlation committee, and several decades passing before the accounts of Jesus were formally written down (at least, the ones that we have now), the legend of Jesus likely developed–with an ever more inaccurrate and exaggerated way–pretty quickly as stories were orally spread from town to town and country to country.
If you don’t think this is the case, then just think of what happened with Mormon history. The stories of the crickets appearing just in the nick of time to save the harvest, Brigham appearing as Joseph before becoming the next leader of the Church, Joseph translating the Book of Mormon using the Urim and Thummin instead of the rock in the hat, John Taylor *not* receiving a revelation that God could never allow the practice of polygamy to be ended in the Church, native Americans are the descendents of Nephites/Lamanites, Joseph literally translated the Egyptian hieroglyphics on the papyrus scrolls, and on and on. All false stories. All stories that Church leaders would have loved to have kept telling had those pesky historians not forced them to change its narrative due to the evidence they uncovered. Now, just think of what would have happened if these events hadn’t been so recent, if we didn’t have books, newspapers, journals, letters, etc. that documented what actually happened. Without all of this, the Church would absolutely not change its “faith promoting” narrative that developed over the years through oral tradition and the talks and articles written by Church leaders.
I think the documentation for what Jesus really did while he was alive was much more scarce in those early years during His life and after He died compared to the documentation for the early LDS faith, so by the time the nascent Christian movement started to formalize its beliefs decades after Jesus’ death, there was little evidence to refute the stories of exorcism and healings that had developed in those decades after He died. Just as modern LDS Church leaders would refuse to eliminate faith promoting stories from the Mormon faith without any evidence, the early Christian movement likely did the same thing. After all, these stories are “faith promoting”, so why would they want to get rid of them?
While Mormons accept the New Testament accounts of exorcism and healings as real, at least there is a little wiggle room, as Mormons do not embrace the idea of “sola scriptura” when it comes to the Bible like many other Christians do. However, the Book of Mormon also states that Christ healed some Nephites shortly after He was resurrected. Orthodox Mormons do essentially believe in sola scriptura when it comes to the BoM, so they would argue that the BoM is proof that the New Testament healings likely happened as well. On the other hand, everyone else would argue that Joseph was just riffing off of the New Testament when he “translated” this account (first piece of evidence being the nearly identical copy of the King James version of the Sermon on the Mount and other quotes from Jesus lifted directly from the New Testament text), so the presence of Christ’s healings in the BoM does nothing to corroborate the NT healings.
Like Janey, I remember being cautioned against speaking too much of Satan. Frankly, I think it was good advice and I’m glad that the Church in general seems increasingly inclined to follow it.
Last lemming, we must be in different wards. There are some weeks at church where I suspect I have heard Satan, or “the adversary” mentioned more times than Jesus Christ.
Not what they meant when they said don’t talk about him. Talking about an adversary who can influence you has always been fine. Talking about one who can possess you was not.
No such thing as exorcism and evil spirits possessing bodies, although my deacons leader back when I was twelve left me scarred for years over him saying that there were evil spirits constantly around us trying to tempt us, even in the very room we were in. For the record, though, I must say that the classic horror movie The Exorcist was the creepiest scariest movie I’ve ever seen. That thing messed with my head for days after.
‘People of the Lie’ was a book written by M. Scott Peck of who also wrote the more well-known ‘The Road Less Travelled’. I can’t remember the specifics, but he mentions participating in 2 exorcisms and labels evil as specific type of mental disorder. Worth a read.
https://archive.is/20230921000825/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-12-15-mn-499-story.html
I read “People of the Lie” and there is much to praise in that book. M. Scott Peck did write an additional book about those two exorcisms. The title is “Glimpses of the Devil”. Tough read. Peck experienced helplessness in the face of what he saw in his patients.
I can’t remember the last time I heard about demonic possession in a church context. On my mission 25 years ago, it was a “fun” topic. There were rumors of Elder so and so a couple of years back having to call the mission president for help because someone put a “voodoo curse” on the sister missionaries. Dumb stuff like that, which I believed at the time. IMO, most of the accounts of possession in the NT (as far as they can be trusted) can be attributed to some explainable mental or physical ailment. Same goes for the more recent accounts out there. I do tend to keep an open mind, however. I’m not superstitious but I’m a little stitious, so I generally avoid the topic. I agree with LoudlySublime. I don’t see any value in a world view (which logically follows the War in Heaven account) that promotes good vs evil, us vs them thinking. I suppose as a metaphor for the potential within us to commit both good and evil acts, the War in Heaven is fine, but the average Mormon doesn’t look at that way.
Isn’t what we witness in the temple ceremony an exorcism? Satan is banished, not from a person, but from a community. Is the manner of his exorcism a priethood ordinance? The priesthood is specifically cited. Rather, it is done in the name of the Savior.
Isn’t there an exorcism in the temple ceremony? Satan is cast out, not of a person but, of a community. The priesthood is not cited. It is done in the name of the Savior, not by the power of the priesthood.
Sorry about the double comment. I don’t comment often and get tripped up by wordpress
Met a possessed guy on my mission who knew stuff about me and the other elders I was with. 100 percent real and unforgettable. Horrifying experience.
There’s another account of possession recounted by recently passed General Authority Enzio Busche and him administering to the missionary who was possessed. It can be found in his book ‘Yearning for the Living God’.
“But if exorcism was an LDS thing, it would certainly be a priesthood thing.” I’m against women in the church ever trying to get the priesthood, however, casting out demons in the name of Jesus is one of the things women can do. I double checked this with chatGPT, just to make sure I wasn’t mistaken.
Jodi/Ruby/Lori/Chad = terrible PR reps for the Church and probably themselves mentally ill adults who were labeling kids as possessed.
Flashbacks of a terrible 5th Sunday lesson by a stake rep telling parents to tell teens to pray away their thoughts of depression.