Rev. Thom Muller
In 1980 a book was published that had an unexpected and yet massive impact on Western popular Culture. It was a book by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder “Michelle Remembers”, in which Pazder published his findings and interviews, with the permission and collaboration of his patient Michelle Smith, in which she, through regressive hypnotherapy, recounted in shocking and deeply disturbing detail how she was raised and abused by a supposed coven of devil worshippers.
The book became a bestseller and flooded popular discourse. Soon, Pazder and Smith were touring all of the big TV talk shows, and even began giving lectures and workshops to mental health professionals and law enforcement agencies, warning people of a massive conspiracy of satanic cults who were systematically engaging in the most horrible and sadistic criminal acts.
Pazder coined the term “satanic ritual abuse”. The book caused such a whirlwind that it set in motion what people are now, in retrospect, calling a form of “collective hysteria”. All over the United States, and soon all over the Western industrialized world, people started coming out and reporting, often under hypnosis, elaborate accounts of terrible things that supposedly happened to them. A large number of people, including reputable psychologists and psychiatrists, began truly believing that there was this massive underground conspiracy.
As it turned out, this could only go on for so long until actual factual research concluded that there was no evidence of even a single case of this. In fact, the unhealthy and deeply unethical relationship and practices of Pazder and Smith became exposed, including the fact that they led a sexual relationship, Pazder ended up leaving his family for her.
Countless lives were ruined by these extremely damning allegations, not only in direct relation to the Michelle case, but in connection with many alleged crimes and abuse that had come as a result of what is now referred to as the “Satanic Panic”. Ironically, it seems that folks like Pazder and Smith were looking for the devil in all the wrong places obsessing about some external conspiracy, while failing to confront their own inner demons.
This phenomenon gives us insight into how culture deals with the concept of Evil. What we see in American culture, and Western culture as a whole, was arguably a response to a rampant de-mythologizing of the concept of Evil.
Within a Roman Catholic context, we have Vatican II, in the mid-60s, which radically changed that particular tradition, not only liturgically but theologically and in terms of messaging. Many elements of Catholicism, which rightfully became associated with superstition and dogmatism became more and more frowned upon, including a belief in a literal devil and a literal hell. This, of course, is just one manifestation of a liberalization of Western Christianity and Western culture, away from what one could argue used to be an obsession with sin and evil and very importantly, the inclusion of hell-mythology in the average person’s personal religious lore, so to speak.
I’m inclined to think that this is primarily a positive development. A lot of spiritual and emotional damage had been done to people with this stuff. Lots of shaming and self-depricating and judgmental stuff.
Yet another perspective on this phenomenon, often expressed by traditionalists, is that Vatican II and the overall liberalization of Mainline Christianity created a void in people’s religious conception. What we see in response is an explosion of interest in the devil and hell in popular media. From Rosemary’s Baby to the Exorcist franchise, to the Satanic Panic or the 80s and 90s.It seems that there is a cultural need to engage narratives, decidedly religious narratives, about evil and hell. Because the experience of darkness is essential to the human experience.
What to do? Return to a superstitious view of reality, where life is seen as a struggle between God and the devil? To an obsolete and harmful engagement with evil? This is one of the areas in which I have really come to appreciate the Swedenborgian framework.
Swedenborgianism is a decidedly liberal theological approach (meaning freedom oriented). God is viewed as indiscriminately loving, and incapable of judgment. Nobody is sent to hell for punishment, and people of all religions are considered to be on a valid, heavenly path, if they live a life of love and kindness. God, meaning love and wisdom, are the core and source of reality, and the purpose and destiny of humanity is to be eternally happy.
Yet something that we have that a lot of fellow liberal traditions don’t have, or don’t engage as much, is an extensive hell-mythology and engagement with the darker aspects of spiritual reality. Swedenborg’s bestseller is entitled “Heaven and HELL”, after all., Not just “Heaven”. Swedenborg engages, by means of vivid mythical imagery from his own inner spiritual experiences, the inner dynamics of unhealthy and self-centered states, which we all encounter in our inner life. He sets up a metaphysical framework, corresponding to an psycho-spiritual framework, which is both affirming of a liberal, universalist, non-judgmental theology and addresses the problem of evil through what one might call religious lore.
To Swedenborg, heaven and hell have absolutely nothing to do with punishment, not even suffering. Hell is not a place of punishment or repayment for our evil deeds, but a state of self-centeredness which we are in freedom to choose to inhabit. The devil doesn’t exist.
Swedenborgian spirituality provides a really healthy framework of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but addressing our need to address inner darkness, constructively, and with the aid of spiritual mythology and imagery, while still maintaining a theology which is life-affirming, non-judgmental, and liberating.
As always, it all boils down to exoteric vs esoteric. Are we looking for the devil in all the wrong places around us? Can we internalize the mythology of the struggle between light and darkness, rather than becoming obsessed with identifying the devil in others?
Rather than either neglecting or suppressing or obsessing over the dark aspects of life, Swedenborgianism invites us to find a healthy, affirmative productive and constructive way of engaging it, that meets our need to mythologize while supporting inner transformation towards union with our ultimate source, pure, unconditional , freely chosen goodness and truth.
Rev. Thom Muller is pastor at the Swedenborgian Society of the East Bay at Hillside, an Urban Sanctuary, in El Cerrito, CA, as well as senior editor of Our Daily Bread. His passions include the intersection of spirituality and psychology, interfaith theology, and the Western esoteric tradition. A native of Germany, Rev. Muller was ordained into the ministry of the Swedenborgian Church of North America in 2016, upon receiving his theological education at Bryn Athyn College and the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA.