From the issue dated March 15, 2002
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A Sociologist Possessed by Pop Culture Explores Links to ExorcismBy BETH MCMURTRIEOne summer evening in Illinois a few years ago, about 500 people filled the chapel at Wheaton College, eager to expel their demons of sexual perversity. A well-heeled collection of Episcopalians, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and Presbyterians, they had traveled from across the country to attend a conference sponsored by Pastoral Care Ministries, an evangelical group based in Wheaton that had promised to cure them of homosexuality and other perceived ills. An Episcopal minister took the stage and, arms outstretched, began praying quietly that people be delivered of their pain, confusion, and anger. Within minutes, the place was bedlam. Middle-aged women and men, dressed in casual weekend wear, began swearing and moaning. Some pounded their groins or simulated masturbation. Others fell to the floor wailing and speaking in tongues. Lay ministers and helpers moved among the congregants, uttering healing prayers. About 45 minutes into the exorcism, the lead minister took control and declared an end to the proceedings. The deliverance, he said, would continue tomorrow. Instantly, people relaxed, collected themselves, and slowly filed out of the room, peacefully chatting with one another. Michael W. Cuneo, an associate professor of sociology at Fordham University, stood in the back of the room, watching in stunned silence. "My goodness," he thought to himself. "What have I just seen?" What he had seen was his first group exorcism. That and more than 50 other exorcisms form the basis of his recent book, American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty (Doubleday, 2001). Mr. Cuneo, a Canadian who is intensely fascinated by American subcultures, spent more than a year crisscrossing the country to produce a vivid portrait of people who fervently believe that the devil is to blame for such problems as anger and alcoholism and -- most common of all -- their perceived sexual troubles like promiscuity, masturbation, and homosexuality. Mr. Cuneo has seen exorcisms in which people vomit profusely into trash bins and others in which the possessed barely move. He has interviewed Roman Catholic priests ambivalent about the validity of claims of possession, and evangelical Protestants who see Satan around every corner. Several exorcists even claimed that Mr. Cuneo himself was afflicted and offered on-the-spot deliverance (he declined). He also met many compassionate ministers who, he argues, were sincere in their desire to help rid people of their troubles. Yet, as he points out in his book, Mr. Cuneo never saw one spinning head, levitating body, or anything else that struck him as belonging to the realm of the paranormal. Although he stops short of saying that demons do not exist -- his book, he says, is cultural commentary, not an effort to prove or disprove possession -- it is clear from his writing and in conversation that he believes the demons haunting the people he has met are more personal than satanic. Supply and Demand The puzzle for Mr. Cuneo, as he began his research, was why people seek out exorcisms. The answer, he concluded after talking to dozens of Protestant "deliverance ministers," Roman Catholic exorcists, and their clients, is popular culture. "It's highly unlikely that there would have been such a fascination with exorcism, or such a demand for exorcism if it weren't for the popular entertainment industry itself promoting it," he says over an Italian lunch in midtown Manhattan. A loquacious speaker with a warm, enthusiastic manner, Mr. Cuneo says that the 1973 release of the movie The Exorcist, along with a few best-selling books churned out in that decade on demonic possession, created an insatiable appetite for the subject. "Everywhere you looked for a while there was this wall-to-wall demonic grotesquerie on your television screen, in movie theaters, the publishing industry, daytime television," he says. "I can't imagine that people would think they were demonized if they didn't see these images trumpeted about, paraded about, constantly before their eyes." Even today, Mr. Cuneo says, those who believe in possession frequently cite The Exorcist and another groundbreaking work, Malachi Martin's 1976 book, Hostage to the Devil, when explaining how demons work. Mr. Cuneo argues that another aspect of popular culture has also made people more open to the idea of demonic possession: the American pursuit of self-perfection. Given how eager we are to label and expel our imperfections, he asks, are exorcisms really any different from 12-step programs, alternative medicine, and New Age therapies? "Deliverance promised new possibilities for the self, the possibility of an endlessly redeemed self, a self renewed and improved at a single stroke," he writes. "Despite being cloaked in the time-orphaned language of demons and supernatural evil, deliverance was surprisingly at home in the brightly lit, fulfillment-on-demand culture of post-'60s America." According to American Exorcism, the Catholic church was unprepared for, and skeptical of, claims of possession. As a result, many people who feared they were demonized turned to charismatic and evangelical Protestants, who were more sympathetic to the idea. Although he offers no aggregate numbers -- few scholars have even studied this subject -- Mr. Cuneo maintains that the exorcism business remains alive and well. For example, among evangelical Protestants, no more than a handful of deliverance ministries existed before 1983, he says. By the early 1990s, there were upwards of 600. In his book, Mr. Cuneo paints vivid portraits of the ministers and priests who perform exorcisms. Many are deeply conservative, seeing demonic possession as a result of the flaws of a liberal society in which drugs, sex, and feminism have opened people to evil spirits. Some of the possession cases he writes about border on the absurd, such as the minister who found himself drawn to pornography magazines at an airport, only to conclude that the cabdriver who brought him there must have demonized him. Others are disturbing, and lead Mr. Cuneo to wonder whether exorcisms distract people from their real problems. He notes, though, that the more sensitive ministers often encourage particularly troubled people to enter therapy to keep their demons at bay. One young man whose exorcism he sat through appeared deeply confused over his sexual identity. He had a troubled childhood, compulsively masturbated, and was obsessed with violent sexual thoughts. After the ritual, the ministers suggested he seek psychotherapy. One of the ministers profiled in American Exorcism, Francis MacNutt, head of Christian Healing Ministries, says that Mr. Cuneo accurately portrayed both the good and bad aspects of his field. "Often," he says of some other ministers, "they overextend deliverance ministry and don't do inner healing of the emotions, and psychological counseling," he says. The Harvard-educated former priest believes that Mr. Cuneo overstated the influence of The Exorcist, but agrees that the therapeutic movement has made people more open to deliverance. His one disappointment: that Mr. Cuneo seemed to remain a skeptic. "I think he was trying to be open," he says, "but whatever it was he saw didn't convince him." Mr. Cuneo says that while he saw no evidence of demons, he found the vast majority of the priests and ministers he met to be caring and sincere people. Most accept no money for their work. And although some believe firmly in the physical release of demons -- vomiting and all -- many prefer to take a calmer, more pastoral approach in conducting exorcisms. He was also surprised by the number of people who claimed that exorcism works. After the mass deliverance he witnessed at Wheaton, "people would tell me they felt at peace," he says. "Some folks said they felt more hopeful and peaceful than they had in a long time." Life on the Margins Mr. Cuneo has long been drawn to the alienated and offbeat segments of American society. His previous book, The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism (Oxford University Press, 1997) profiled a number of separatist groups that had broken away from the church. His next work, provisionally titled "Passin' Through" (Broadway/Random House, 2003), is about a triple murder involving backwoods methamphetamine manufacturers in the Missouri Ozarks. Mr. Cuneo has followed his own beat as well. The son of a cabdriver and a teacher's assistant, he grew up in a blue-collar section of Toronto. At 20, he set out on a two-year tour of the United States, hitchhiking around the country and supporting himself with odd jobs. He delivered handbills in San Francisco and cleaned cargo boats in New Orleans. After returning to Canada, he enrolled at the University of Toronto, got married, had a child, dropped out, and started driving a cab to support his growing family. Many fares later, he returned to his studies at Toronto, eventually earning his doctorate in the sociology and anthropology of religion at age 34. Cabdriving is central to Mr. Cuneo's identity. He even drove a cab his first year teaching at Fordham. That experience has informed his research, he says: Being friendly, down-to-earth, and willing to listen to his fares helped him when it came time to track down and gain access to generally untrusting people, be they Catholic separatists, deliverance ministers, or Ozark outlaws. "Driving a cab is the greatest training for everything I do," he says. The fact is, Mr. Cuneo loves the road, and everything that comes with it. In 1990, after he finished his first year at Fordham, he and his wife decided they would rather raise their kids in Toronto. Every weekend he makes the 510-mile commute back home in his 1989 Pontiac Bonneville, which, he is proud to say, has 290,000 miles on it. He keeps no apartment in New York. Instead, he stays at a different cheap motel every week. "I am, in terms of my tastes, a very primitive guy," he says with one of his frequent broad smiles. "I like to hang out at Waffle Houses at the counter. A grilled cheese and coffee -- that's ecstasy, that's heaven to me." When he is conducting research, he practically lives on the road. His books begin on a tip, he says, then he jumps in his car to do "reconnaissance." The idea for "Passin' Through" came from a newspaper article. He spent a week in the Ozarks, decided it was worth a book, then spent the next 11 months driving to Missouri to talk to the drug dealers, methamphetamine-lab operators, police officers, and lawyers who played a part in the case. A Journalist's Approach Although many of the characters that populate his books live on the margins of society, Mr. Cuneo believes they offer lessons about the larger culture. For example, both The Smoke of Satan and American Exorcism, he argues, reflect the timeless American pursuit of moral perfectibility. "This quest for utopianism is still very much alive, and it assumes very interesting guises," he says. William D. Dinges, an associate professor of religion at Catholic University of America who has reviewed The Smoke of Satan, agrees. Catholic separatist groups, which broke away following major church reforms in the mid-1960s, reflect the church's difficulties in adapting to a modern, more secular, world. "These more fringe groups, they are canaries in the cultural mine," he says. Both The Smoke of Satan and American Exorcism have received positive notices from reviewers and scholars. A number of academics have praised Mr. Cuneo's empathy for his subjects, and his ability to write in a way that is understandable to the general public. Not all scholars feel his journalistic style hits the right notes, however. R. Scott Appleby, a history professor at the University of Notre Dame who has written extensively about religion in the United States, calls American Exorcism "engaging" but says it doesn't venture much beyond the anecdotal. He'd like to see more hard data to back up Mr. Cuneo's claims, and a stronger theoretical framework to provide context to what he witnessed. But Bradford J. Verter, a visiting assistant professor of religion and culture at Williams College who uses Mr. Cuneo's two most recent books in his class, disagrees that there is anything lacking in American Exorcism. "The theoretical issues are not as deeply articulated as they would be if he were writing for a narrow audience, but they're no less powerful for that," he says. "Who knows, writing for a broader audience may get people interested in the subject." Mr. Cuneo is unapologetic about his approach. "There's no question that American Exorcism is a cultural critique, and it's intended to be that." he says. "I'm not interested in writing a traditional scholarly book in that sense. I'm interested in vigorous writing." His next book after "Passin' Through," tentatively titled "Midnight Motel," looks at the life of transients in the United States. He has also done preliminary research for books on gambling, and on gypsy-cab drivers in the Bronx and Harlem. He loves Americana, he says, the colorful lives of the down and out, the quirky lingo people use, their resistance to the homogenizing forces that make so many cities and towns indistinguishable from one another. "These are the most real people in the United States," he says. "These are the people I love the most, the people I most appreciate being around. So to be able to write about their lives and the local subcultures is an honor, and a privilege, for me. http://chronicle.com Section: Research & Publishing Page: A19
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Copyright © 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education