The Devil Has the Best Tunes (Part 3): The Roll and Thump of the Voodoo Drum

The antipathy of the most hidebound fundamentalists toward Christian rock music and other forms of Contemporary Christian Music is a clear indication of the fact that the offense they take at rock music in general goes beyond the edgy lyrics characteristic of secular rock and pop. So, what is it about the music itself that makes religious fundamentalists so angry?

Generally speaking, most Christians today look back on their fellow believers in earlier generations and shake their head in embarrassment at the panic their forebears manifested in anti-rock writings and lectures. But back in the 1980s, ministers and many lay believers came out of the woodwork to warn entire congregations, as well as television audiences who watched talk shows with low guest standards, that the beat of secular rock songs utilized some kind of “satanic drumbeat.”

As evidence, these ministers often claimed that rock music emulated the same beats used by African music tribes when they called upon spirits for guidance and to “incite warriors into violent frenzy [1].” In several of his seminars, conservative Christian minister Bill Gothard has agreed, saying that rock music is used by African natives to call up evil spirits [2]. Michael R. O’Doonan, a retired Christian radio singer and former vocal music instructor at Faith Baptist Bible College, claimed that “the same melodic and rhythmic styles found in rock music existed in Africa centuries before classical music appeared in Europe [3].”

The notion that rhythm in music was able to take control of brain function was to some extent encouraged by some practitioners of scientific research that was peer-reviewed but nevertheless flawed. In the early 1960s, neurophysiologist Andrew Neher proposed that ritual drumming – the kind that the fundamentalists cited above were afraid of – drove alpha waves in the human brain into a “possession trance” state [4]. This proposition was embraced uncritically by many anthropologists as definitive “proof” that drumming can induce trances, but Neher’s experimental evidence and theory has been shown to be seriously flawed [5].

The claimed presence of African styles of rhythm and melody in rock music has been highly problematic for many fundamentalists. In Satan’s Music Exposed (reviewed in Part 2 of this series), Bible teacher Lowell Hart offers the following bit of fundamentalist anthropology: “Have you ever wondered why in pagan cultures men can dance for hours, sometimes all night, seemingly without becoming exhausted? Not discounting the reality of demonic activity, rhythm plays a major role. Pagan dances and rituals are always accompanied by the incessant beat of drums [6].”

Indeed, the antipathy of the more ethnocentric naysayers of rock toward the rhythm and beat of the music is especially pronounced. According to Terry Watkins’ fundamentalist website,

With all the many references to musical instruments, there is one instrument that is NEVER mentioned! The DRUM! Why is that? The drum was a very common instrument in Egypt and the lands around Israel. And yet the DRUM is NEVER mentioned in a King James Bible.

Did the Lord just forget to include the DRUM or is there another reason?

Is it because — drums are associated with voodoo, shamanism, paganism and magic rituals? [7]

There is nothing new in the religious fear of and hostility toward popular music. Back in the 1930s, English clergyman Montague Summers, who professed belief in witches, vampires and werewolves, noted that “some acute observers have shrewdly scented the devil’s own orchestra” in jazz music. In his 1937 work A Popular History of Witchcraft, he cites the authority of one Father Philip De Ternant in support of his condemnation:

[De Ternant] justly and in good time condemns the “Voodoo Cult imported into our Dance Halls without protest”, and points out how young people are being corrupted by “the roll and the thump of the Voodoo Drum” which “responsive to subtle manipulation not far removed from black magic, plays a most hypnotic part” in the obscene, murderous, and wholly diabolical Voodoo cult. Quite unwittingly, no doubt, to-day many dancers are exercising their steps to the music of the witches. “Dreary pushing and pulling about the floor with almost aimless steps have now taken the place of dancing [8].”

Not to be outdone by the moral crusaders of yesteryear, Jacob Aranza, writing in the 1980s, goes even further. He asserts that rock music was invented by the angel Lucifer at the time of his rebellion against God in heaven, presumably before the earth was created. “Lucifer is the only angelic being mentioned in the Bible to possess a musical ministry,” he writes. “At one point in time, he used his musical abilities for God’s purposes, but now he uses them to exalt evil and draw men away from God. Having been created with musical abilities, it is not hard to believe that Satan indeed influences music today . . . Party music goes back a long way! Ever since Lucifer’s fall, music that incites the flesh to fulfill its lusts, and encourages mankind to sin has always been played [9].” Aranza even cites the account of the Israelites singing and worshipping the golden calf in the absence of their desert-wandering leader Moses (as told in the Old Testament’s Book of Exodus) as one of the very first rock concerts in human history [10]!

Pastor Fletcher Brothers agrees with this highly-imaginative interpretation. He notes that in Exodus 32:17, Moses is said to have heard the Israelites shouting as he descended the mountain on which he had sojourned alone with the desert god Yahweh. The verse also speaks of the “noise of war in the camp.” Brothers wonders to what this passage could possibly be referring, since there were no guns or bombs at that time in history. He proceeds to speculate that the verse referred to the beating of drums, such as when used in war. He notes the references to “dancing” in verse 19 and to “singing” in verse 18. He also highlights the passages that speak of the mischief and corruption of the Israelites and concludes,

Could this have been the first recorded “rock concert?” Who knows? But we do know it was music or singing. We do know that the people had “corrupted themselves.” They were naked, and . . . leave the rest to your imagination. We know the “singing” sounded more like “screaming” and “screeching.” Whatever was going on was “bad news”, because as you read on you will find that many people lost their lives [11].

One wonders if Aranza and Brothers had spent a bit too much time listening to the thrash metal band Exodus while high on the drug of religious fundamentalism (I am sure metal lovers would love to see a music video in which the bloody massacre of the calf-worshipping heretics at the hands of Moses’ soldiers is set to Exodus’s song “Bonded By Blood” – I know I would).

The “first recorded rock concert” interpretation of the 32nd chapter of Exodus is a prime example of the practice common among biblical inerrantists and literalists of superimposing ancient biblical narratives onto modern-day issues and interpreting said issues accordingly. But in fact, the highly-imaginative alternate-history rendering of Exodus 32 indulged in by these evangelists is certainly an unwarranted hermeneutical stretch. If self-professed “rock experts” such as Aranza and Brothers can find rock music in the Old Testament, it is little wonder that they also found diabolical satanic messages hidden in rock records, messages which yield themselves only when records are reversed and played backwards.

NOTES

1. Dennis Corle, “The Pied Piper” of Rock Music (Milford, OH: J.P. Printing Ministry, 1985), p. 63.

2. Paul Baker, Contemporary Christian Music: Where It Came from, What It Is, Where It’s Going (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1985), p. 178.

3. Michael R. O’Doonan, Why Not Christian Rock? (Ankeny, IA: Laudamus Press, 1987), p. 2.

4. Andrew Neher, “A Physiological Explanation of Unusual Behavior in Ceremonies Involving Drums,” Human Biology 34, no. 2 (May 1962): 151-160.

5. Gilbert Rouget, Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possession (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 172-176.

6. Lowell Hart, Satan’s Music Exposed (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 1981), p. 76

7. Dial-the-Truth Ministries, “Bible Guidelines for Christian Music,” AV1611.org, http://www.av1611.org/cqguide.html (accessed 5 September 2012, italics and bold font in original).

8. Montague Summers, A Popular History of Witchcraft (London: Kegan Paul, 1937), p. 153.

9. Jacob Aranza, More Rock, Country and Backward Masking Unmasked (Shreveport, LA: Huntington House Inc., 1985), pp. 18-19, 20.

10. Ibid., p. 20.

11. Fletcher A. Brothers, The Rock Report (Lancaster, PA: Starburst Publishers, 1987), p. 140.

The Devil Has the Best Tunes (Part 2): "Why Should the Devil Have the Best Music?"

In his book The Role of Rock, evangelist John Muncy asks his readers an interesting question:

Think about it… when was the last time you heard a rock and roll song offer it’s [sic] listener forgiveness? When was the last time you heard a rock and roll singer tell about being forgiven and set free from guilt? Well, they never will until they come in contact with the ROCK THAT DOESN’T ROLL…JESUS CHRIST!!!! [1]

Reading this, one gets the impression that Muncy is either ignoring the cultural phenomenon known as “Contemporary Christian Music,” or else he had been living under the proverbial rock when he penned these impassioned words, thus rendering his “research” skills questionable. Christian rock music, including Christian heavy metal, featured rockers who sang often about divine forgiveness and being set free from guilt, screaming out their modernized hymns to the exact same kind of musical accompaniment with which their secular counterparts sang about sex, drugs, violence and Satanism.

For instance, consider the following lyrics:

Honestly, I believe in you
Do you trust in me
Patiently, I will stand by you
I will stand beside you faithfully
And through the years
I will be a friend
For always and forever
Call on me and I'll be there for you
I'm a friend who always will be true
And I love you can't you see
That I can say I love you honestly

The words of this poem are not likely to call to one’s mind the heavy metal genre of music. Yet these lyrics belong to Stryper, a metal band in the 1980s who associated themselves with Jesus Christ rather than with Satan, sex and drugs. Standing for “Salvation Through Redemption Yielding Peace, Encouragement, and Righteousness,” the name Stryper was derived from a verse in the Christian Old Testament, Isaiah 53:5. Frequently appearing as part of their logo, the verse speaks of a personage “by whose stripes we are healed.” Known by their fan base as the “Yellow and Black Attack” (the name of their 1984 debut album released on the secular label Enigma Records), the band members wore yellow and black spandex outfits and sported the long and disheveled hairstyle and makeup characteristic of Eighties metal musicians. Author and radio host Paul Baker, in his definitive history of the CCM movement, called Stryper “the most ostentatious of the groups in their appearance [2].” The lead singer, Michael Sweet, sung in an extremely high-pitched voice that at times reminds one of a dog whistle. The lyrics quoted above are from the band’s song “Honestly,” a piano ballad from Stryper’s 1986 album To Hell with the Devil. The song (a fairly pathetic addition to what in my opinion is an otherwise rather good album, musically speaking) was featured on mainstream pop radio once it somehow became a crossover hit.

The band members of Stryper in full regalia: I think the Devil was okay with letting them go.

At the time Stryper came on the music scene in the early 1980s, the pious backlash to secular music known as “Contemporary Christian Music” (CCM) was still only a fledgling venture struggling to get on its feet [3]. The phenomenon of CCM, of which Stryper is a particularly interesting part, is an emulation of the kind of fare offered by secular pop and rock radio. In the mid- to late 1960s, the church decided it would serve as a great evangelistic tool, as well as a wholesome alternative to “worldly” music. Christian radio, complete with guitars, drums and solos, was born in the Seventies, and Christian bands such as Petra and The 2nd Chapter of Acts became household names among Christian youth. Attempting to seamlessly wed faith and culture, Christian rock is “full-on rock and roll with the volume and the syncopation and the downbeats and the noise, yet it is used for worship, evangelism, and the entertainment of abstinent youth-group members and 50-year-old biker pastors [4].”

In marked contrast to its lowly and awkward beginnings, Christian record labels today are owned by large music corporations who know how very profitable CCM has become. In his recent scholarly treatment of Christian pop music, David W. Stowe remarks that “CCM is now one of the fastest-growing genres of music, its records outselling those of classical, jazz, and New Age combined [5].” In fact, it is now often difficult to discern any significant difference between the production values of Christian music and that of secular pop and rock music. But this was not always the case. In its early days, CCM suffered from very rough production quality. This was largely owing to the fact that the primary (and possibly the only) motivation driving the emergence of CCM was the desire on the part of its creators to have young people listen to good, wholesome, Jesus-oriented Christian music as an alternative to secular rock music, which of course was “of the devil.” This evil influence was thought to be quite ubiquitous in the world of secular music, and even seemingly benign music that did not sing about sex, drugs and Satan was warned against. Hence, according to Pastor Jacob Aranza, one of the most vocal anti-rock evangelists of the 1980s, “Just because a group doesn’t openly sing about immorality doesn’t mean their music is approved by God. If the music you’re listening to doesn’t come from the heart of a spiritual Christian artist, you are opening the door to carnality, humanism and demonic forces. It will distract you from serving him, feed self-centeredness, and eventually breed rebellion in your heart [6].”

The Traditionalists Fight Back

But several fundamentalist Christian writers even warned against Christian rock and other forms of Contemporary Christian Music, insisting that their artists were not “spiritual Christians” of the kind Aranza supported. In fact, to some concerned believers, Christian rock was and is just as evil and satanic as any secular and worldly rock. Terry Watkins, head of Dial-the-Truth Ministries, is especially emphatic in exposing Christian rock as an evil ploy of the devil. His fundamentalist Christian website contains a number of very long articles accusing virtually all Contemporary Christian Music artists of consciously or unconsciously operating under Satan’s influence. Says Watkins, “Today, rock music is a common companion of the church. . . . the rebellion, the sexual theme, the blasphemy, the occult influence, are found ‘lurking under the cover’ of Christian rock [7].” Watkins sees these devilish elements in the lyrical and musical contents of even the most overtly Christian artists such as Sandi Patti, Michael W. Smith and Point of Grace, whose song lyrics unmistakably and unambiguously promote Christian and biblical beliefs. Of course, the usual suspects are included as well. Watkins says of the band Stryper,

With long womanish hair, earrings, mascara, lip-gloss, eye shadow and effeminate clothes, Stryper demolished any convictions left in Christian music! How Christians tolerate such ungodly behavior is frightening! And despite the Bible's clear warnings! 1 Corinthians 6:9 says “. . . Be not deceived: neither fornicators, . . . NOR EFFEMINATE, . . . shall inherit the kingdom of God.” The demonic creatures from the bottomless pit in Revelation 9:8 are described as “their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as THE HAIR OF WOMEN. . .”! [8]

Thanks to Watkins belligerent ravings, I can no longer read Revelation 9 without picturing the swarm of demonic locusts, which are described in the passage as pouring out upon the earth from a bottomless pit, having the heads of the Stryper band members. There is a striking irony that presents itself when one studies fundamentalist attacks against Christian rock music: while such fundamentalists are more than willing to view the theological themes and elements present in Christian rock as nothing more than a façade or a gimmick, they refuse to concede the fact that the use of Satan in secular heavy metal and other forms of rock is just as much or more of a money-making gimmick.

As early as 1980, the most vocal spokesperson for the view that Christian rock is a ploy of the devil was the infamous televangelist Jimmy Swaggart. In the pages of his monthly magazine The Evangelist, Swaggart criticized Christian rockers for doing nothing more than “copying the ways of the world” and lambasted Christian rock for having “vacated the premise of the Holy Spirit and succumbed to the methods used by demon spirits [9].” Swaggart – who has since come to be known primarily for his own moral lapses – categorically denounced as sinful all “contemporary” music, and his failure to see recognize the relative nature inherent in the designation of “contemporary” is reflected in the fact that he himself had often made use of certain instruments and arrangements for his own recordings which were widely considered too risqué for conservative churches only a few years before [10]. Relying on anecdotal accounts of the offense he took when seeing Christian music artists performing on television rather than scholarly analysis, Swaggart writes,

I turn on my television set. I see a young lady who goes under the guise of being a Christian, known all over the nation, dressed in skin-tight leather pants, shaking and wiggling her hips to the beat and rhythm of the music as the strobe lights beat their patterns across the stage and the band plays the contemporary rock sound which cannot be differentiated from songs by the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, or anyone else. And you may try to tell me this is of God and that it is leading people to Christ, but I know better [11].

Following closely on the heels of Swaggart’s well-publicized attacks on CCM, fundamentalist Bible teacher Lowell Hart authored a 189-page tirade entitled Satan’s Music Exposed, in which he indicts all modern Christian music as evil. Undertaking to blow the cover off CCM and reveal it as a means devised by Satan himself to sneak his way into the church through the back door, Hart writes,

Like the hamburger-French fry diet of today (that has replaced the nutritious foods of grandfather’s day) the teen-agers’ fare of today’s Christian music, with its frothy, candy-coated content, has been substituted for the solid meat of Luther, Wesley, Watts, and Sankey. In search of something that will reach turned-off youth, many have incorporated the sweet but empty sounds of the world into Christian music in hopes of spreading the good news. Unfortunately, this unholy alliance of pop music with church music is leading many young people into distorted concepts and false impressions of the Christian life [12].

Contrary to Hart’s assertions, a great deal of the traditional and hymnological music of the likes of Luther, Wesley, Watts and Sankey was not the “solid meat” he believes it to be. Much of it was appropriated from “frothy, candy-coated content” as well. The famous hymn-writer Charles Wesley, a prominent figure in the Methodist movement of the 18th century, wrote about 6,500 hymns during his lifetime. The tune of most of Wesley’s hymns was lifted directly from a great number of popular tunes current at that time. This was mainly due to the fact that Wesley lacked any formal musical training and ability. The same is true of Luther’s hymns. The late historian and educator Benjamin Brawley observed that “With the Gospel Hymns came a more popular tone and greater effort to reach the man in the street; and out of the social forces at work a little later a demand for a hymnody specially adapted to the needs of the new age [13].” In other words, the same worldly motivations to accommodate popular mediums that gave rise to Contemporary Christian Music in the early Seventies were in essence the same as those that produced the hymns congregations consider as sacred and transcendent over pop culture. But a look at history shows they are anything but transcendent; they too are a product of “lowbrow” popular culture.

Hart addresses these points and attempts to offer a counterargument near the end of his book. He quotes Luther’s own words: “These songs were arranged in four parts to give the young – who at any rate should be trained in music and other fine arts – something to wean them from love ballads and carnal songs and teach them something of value in their place, thus combining the good with the pleasing as is proper for youth [14].” Hart comments, “This doesn’t sound like a man who borrowed drinking tunes to make into hymns! [15]” But Hart is clearly missing the point; Luther certainly had an antipathy toward tavern tunes, and no one contests this. But Luther did see in “love ballads and carnal songs” an opportunity to introduce the youth of his day to music with sacred themes, and he appropriated them for that purpose. Hart also conveniently leaves out the remainder of Luther’s words on the subject. Luther went on to write,

Nor am I of the opinion that the Gospel should destroy and blight all the arts, as some of the pseudo-religious claim. But I would like to see all the arts, especially music, used in the service of Him who gave and made them [16].

Unlike Hart, who certainly does wish to destroy and blight all musical arts except classical, hymns and Sousa marches, Luther had no qualms about borrowing the popular musical styles of his day and writing new words to their tunes. Hart again completely misses the point when he writes that “to equate today’s rock music, with all of its heavy syncopated rhythms and dissonant harmonies, with the simple hymn tunes and folk melodies of two or three centuries ago is to stretch the comparison beyond the breaking point [17].” The fact that today’s style of rock music obviously did not exist in Luther’s and Wesley’s day does nothing to invalidate the argument that Luther, Wesley and others did in fact borrow the prevailing styles of pop music in wide use among those who did not frequent traditional church environments.

Even though Hart’s book is over thirty years old and out of print, Christians today who have a bone to pick with those who mix their otherworldly haunts with sinful, dirty rock music continue to cite him as a source. Fundamentalist Christian blogger Cody Watters drags in Hart as a source in his diatribe against CCM. In an unabashed display of ethnocentrism, he writes,

Why dirty the name of Jesus Christ by dragging him into Rock and Roll? The beat of Rock and Roll stems from African music and Paganism. Rock and Roll has been used to glorify sex, drug, alcohol, immodesty and the Devil, so why use it for God? God is not pleased with people that dirty His Holy name [18].

The Growing Secularization of the Sacred

The fears of the most tradition-bound believers, even those who rely on obscure, out-of-print and largely-forgotten tirades, is well justified. The Contemporary Christian Music scene has undergone many changes since the days Swaggart, Hart and others railed against it, and all these changes absorb more and more of the secular market. Today, most churches are so heavily marketed toward the pop culture and toward mainstream audiences that many now feature full-blown rock and roll shows. Today’s churches make use of many electric instruments, and many have bands that are actually very talented. They feature full lighting, fog, multiple multimedia screens, and stadium seating. Attending many churches today can in fact be a very concert-esque experience.

The key to this evolution of church environment lies in advanced marketing techniques. The modern church is very adept at getting secular audiences into their doors and in drawing out the emotions of the audience during the course of their over-the-top religious shows. In fact, everything is designed to manipulate the emotions – every dimming of the lights, every pause in the music, every tap of the cymbal, every strum of the guitar – so that when each person leaves, they feel as if they have been touched by something literally out of this world. Rather than being a new phenomenon, the emotional manipulation in today’s high-tech religious worship services is merely an advanced level of previously-existing emotional manipulation in religious music. As the late Congregational minister and musicologist Erik Routley observed,

[H]ymn-singing is, as a matter of fact, the most insistent and clamorous of all the ways in which the Christian faith and worship makes impact on the world around it . . . You can close your eyes; you can stay away from the church and so neither taste nor see that the Lord is good. But you cannot close your ears, and if a group of Christian people chose to sing a hymn under your windows you are defenceless [19].

Unfortunately, there is nothing of substance in the experience.

NOTES

1. John Muncy, The Role of Rock: Harmless Entertainment or Destructive Influence? (Canton, OH: Daring Books, 1989), p. 309 (bold font in original).

2. Paul Baker, Contemporary Christian Music: Where It Came from, What It Is, Where It’s Going (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1985), p. 185.

3. For my brief discussion of the history of the CCM movement, see Nathan Dickey, “Religion in American Popular Culture (Part 3): Contemporary Christian Music,” The Journeyman Heretic (blog) 7 June 2012, http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2012/06/religious-evangelism-in-american_07.html (accessed 22 October 2012).

4. John J. Thompson, Raised by Wolves: The Story of Christian Rock & Roll (Toronto, Ontario: ECW Press, 2000).

5. David W. Stowe, No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), p. 1.

6. Jacob Aranza, More Rock, Country and Backward Masking Unmasked (Shreveport, LA: Huntington House Inc., 1985), p. 47.

7. Terry Watkins, “Christian Rock: Blessing or Blasphemy,” Dial-the-Truth Ministries n.d. (last modified 21 March 2012, italics in original), http://www.av1611.org/crock.html (accessed 23 October 2012).

8. Ibid., bold font, capitalization and italics in original.

9. Jimmy Swaggart, “Two Points of View: ‘Christian’ Rock and Roll,” The Evangelist 17, no. 8 (August 1985): 50.

10. Baker, Contemporary Christian Music (see note 2), p. 178.

11. Swaggart, “Two Points of View: ‘Christian’ Rock and Roll” (see note 9). Swaggart may be here referring to Amy Grant, the Christian singer who had at that time been the recipient of four Grammy Awards and whose performances were featured on MTV in addition to explicitly Christian programming. If Swaggart was in fact referring to Grant, he is obviously a very poor judge of popular music. Amy Grant sounds nothing like the Grateful Dead or the Beatles.

12. Lowell Hart, Satan’s Music Exposed (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 1981), p. 11.

13. Benjamin Brawley, History of the English Hymn (New York: Abingdon Press, 1932), p. 234.

14. Martin Luther, as quoted in Dwight Gustafson, “Should Sacred Music Swing?” Faith for the Family Jan/Feb 1975, p. 40.

15. Hart, Satan’s Music Exposed (see note 12), p. 177.

16. Martin Luther, as quoted in Robin A Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007), p. 37.

17. Hart, Satan’s Music Exposed (see note 12), p. 176.

18. Cody Watters, “The Evils of CCM,” Ruckmanite 1611 (blog) 28 May 2012, http://ruckmanite1611.blogspot.com/2012/05/evils-of-ccm.html (accessed 20 October 2012).

19. Erik Routley, B.D., D.Phil., Hymns and Human Life (New York: Philosophical Library, 1952), pp. 2-3.

The Devil Has the Best Tunes (Part 1): Introduction

[T]he not-so-subliminal messages invariably present in fundamentalist Christian criticisms of rock music are reaching millions of people, and these messages are so inimical to what most of us are trying to do as educators and scholars that one must not ignore them. Since it is in the very nature of fundamentalism that ideological positions are simply announced to the faithful, who are expected to accept them without thought or question, it must fall to outsiders to challenge and contradict these pronouncements if they run contrary to rational discourse, scholarly objectivity, or the constitutionally protected rights of American citizens.

~ Charles Hamm [1]

Heavy metal vocalist and songwriter Ozzy Osbourne hitchhiking to hell

For well over a generation, many fundamentalist Christians and other conservative religious believers have spread dire warnings about the evil in rock music. These deprecations became especially widespread and ubiquitous in the 1980s and reached a frenzied peak in the 1990s. Fundamentalist preacher Fletcher Brothers concludes his book The Rock Report with a bit of pious arithmetic:

Sex and drugs equals rock and roll. Rebellion, Satan equals rock and roll. Homosexuality, incest equals rock and roll. Sado-masochism, mutilation equals rock and roll. Suicide, alcohol equals rock and roll. Hopelessness, anti-godliness equals rock and roll. Murder, occultism equals rock and roll. The list goes on and on. [2]

It is little wonder, then, that Brothers declares at the outset, “I make no apology when I say that I believe that rock music . . . is public enemy number one of our young people today [3].” He goes on to complain, “I can’t think of one good thing to come out of the recent trend in rock music other than the revenue it provides to our free enterprise system [4].” But for Brothers, this benefit is not enough to counteract the harmful effects he perceives rock music to be wreaking on society; he openly and explicitly advocates censorship in The Rock Report, which he intended to serve as a “quick, ready reference guide” for knowing which music groups parents and activist organizations should work toward banning. Religious conservative David Noebel flatly states, “Rock music is evil because it is to music what Dada and surrealism are to art – atheistic, chaotic, nihilistic [5].”

In 1989, a 400-page anti-rock polemic written by itinerant evangelist John Muncy was published, entitled The Role of Rock: Harmless Entertainment or Destructive Influence? Muncy, founder and president of Jesus Cares Ministries, maintains that the latter is true of rock music, which he asserts is primarily responsible for an increase in society of rebellion, sexual promiscuity and deviance, alcohol abuse, drug use, “false religions,” violence, suicide and Satanism [6].

It is interesting to note that conservative anti-rock alarmists who complain about the lyrics and imagery in rock music being replete with bloody violence and supernaturally-oppressive dark themes never apply these criticisms to several of the most well-known hymns of the Christian faith. For example, any objective assessment of the lyrics contained in the famous hymn “Are You Washed in the Blood?” will not fail to call to one’s mind a mental image of people bathing themselves in human blood. Using the metaphor of a lamb sacrifice, the hymn makes reference to Christianity’s literal doctrine of a human sacrifice. The hymn “There is Power in the Blood” contains a clear reference to a flow of literal blood which possesses occultic power to erase “sin stains.” Coming just short of raising images of gushes of blood, the hymn is speaking of blood that was shed on a crucifix from a human sacrifice. Again, the hymn “Nothing but the Blood” makes reference to a “fount” of human blood that flows from Jesus’ body. Fanny Crosby’s hymn “Saved by the Blood” tells us “We’re saved by the blood that was drawn from the side of Jesus our Lord, when He languished and died.” That blood, again, is described as a fountain, “where the vilest may go and wash their souls [7].” All this bloody and occult imagery in Christian hymns, of which many more examples could be given, would fit right in with any black- death- or heavy-metal rock band’s motifs.

Themes of the occult and of Satanism in rock music were and are almost always nothing more than a money-making gimmick (in fact, the rock artist King Diamond, who takes his Satanism very seriously, is probably the single exception) and only fundamentalist Christians and “cult cops” tend to take their imagery and lyrics seriously. Pop and rock music has always prided itself in being “over the top,” cutting-edge and often overtly sexual. This has been the case since rock music’s inception, and little has changed in this regard. In an earlier generation, Christian fundamentalists and other conservatives denounced musicians like Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley as an evil influence on the youth. When Elvis performed on the Ed Sullivan Show, television producers were pressured into avoiding shooting any video of him below the waist. His gyrations were that offensive to the millions of concerned conservatives in the viewing audience.

NOTES

1. Charles Hamm, Putting Popular Music in Its Place (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 369.

2. Fletcher A. Brothers, The Rock Report (Lancaster, PA: Starburst Publishers, 1987), p. 141, bold font and italics in original.

3. Ibid., p. 13.

4. Ibid.

5. David A. Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon: Charming or Harming a Generation? (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982), p. 42.

6. John Muncy, The Role of Rock: Harmless Entertainment or Destructive Influence? (Canton, OH: Daring Books, 1989).

7. For my discussion and deconstruction of the themes present in Christian hymnology, see Nathan Dickey, “Songs of Human Sacrifice: An Exploration of the Theme of Redemption in Christian Hymns,” The Journeyman Heretic (blog) 14 May 2010, http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/05/songs-of-human-sacrifice-exploration-of.html (accessed 22 October 2012).

Sinister Soap, McDevil Burgers and Scary Numbers: A Critique of Modern Superstitions

“As if the natural Calamities of Life were not sufficient for it, we turn the most indifferent Circumstances into Misfortunes, and suffer as much from trifling Accidents, as from real Evils. I have known the shooting of a Star spoil a Night's Rest; and have seen a Man in Love grow pale and lose his Appetite, upon the plucking of a Merry-thought. A Screech-Owl at Midnight has alarmed a Family, more than a Band of Robbers; nay, the Voice of a Cricket hath struck more Terrour, than the Roaring of a Lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable that may not appear dreadful to an Imagination that is filled with Omens and Prognosticks. A Rusty Nail, or a Crooked Pin, shoot up into Prodigies.”
~ Joseph Addison, 1711 [1]

The controversial Procter & Gamble logo, now obsolete.

Case Studies in Modern Superstition

Urban legends are a rich source of moral panics, both historically and in our present day and age. In the early 1980s, the multinational consumer goods company Procter & Gamble was embroiled in unwanted media attention and controversy when fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists nationwide worked themselves up into a panicked frenzy over the company’s newly adopted logo.

This scare was a symptom of a much larger problem in American society at the time, one that persists to this day almost thirty years later. Fundamentalist faith, then as now, trained its adherents to see evil around every corner and discouraged the believers from engaging in independent homework. The faithful are trained to simply take the word of their spiritual leaders – pastors, teachers, parents, etc. If one of these authoritative figures declares something to be evil, believers follow up with a knee-jerk reaction and automatically assume there are major consequences in allowing these “evil things” to be tolerated.

The controversial logo in question actually had its origin in the mid-nineteenth century. The symbol was first emblazoned by barge workers on crates of P&G star candles starting in the year 1851 as a way of conveniently identifying the cargo. The general working public was not as literate as they are today. As a result, pictures were more commonly used than text, and in the case of P&G cargo, pictures were used to easily identify and distinguish crates belonging to different companies [2].

It was this identifying crate symbol that P&G modified and adopted as their trademark logo in the 1980s. The logo consisted of a bearded man’s face in a half-moon overlooking thirteen stars, which represented the original thirteen American colonies. These three elements (a moon, stars, the number 13) were erroneously interpreted by religious fundamentalists all over the country as a recipe for diabolical evil, and they made the fantastic leap from the new logo to claims that Procter & Gamble was involved in Satanism.

Fourteen years after the initial controversy began, an urban legend developed that both resurrected and further exacerbated the issue and brought it once again to the attention of a gullible public. In what turned out to be a completely unsubstantiated rumor that nevertheless spread rapidly, the president of Procter & Gamble was believed to have publicly admitted on the March 1, 1993 broadcast of The Phil Donahue Show to being a Satanist who supported the Church of Satan with the profits he made from the company. This rumor was first spread by a 1994 letter sent via the Internet to Christian bulletins internationally:

The president of Proctor [sic] & Gamble appeared on the Phil Donahue show on March 1, 1993. He announced that due to the openness of our society, he was coming out of the closet about his association with the CHURCH OF SATAN. He states that a large portion of the profits of Proctor & Gamble products go to support the SATANIC CHURCH. . . . Below are a list [sic] of Proctor & Gamble products. . . . Christians should remember that if they purchase any of these products, they will be contributing to the support of the Church of Satan. Inform other Christians about this! Stop buying other Proctor & Gamble products and let the president of Proctor & Gamble know that there are far more enough Christians to make a difference! [3]

Fundamentalist conspiracy-theorists with a pattern-seeking fetish who took this claim seriously apparently were immune to the otherwise common human phenomenon of déjà vu. Back in 1977, the exact same claim was made about the fast-food chain McDonald’s, who allegedly donated a portion of their profits to satanic interests. The P&G scare resembled the earlier McDonald’s scare in almost every particular, in fact; rumor had it that McDonald’s company founder and senior chairman Ray Kroc appeared on Phil Donahue and admitted that his company supported the Church of Satan through regular tithes. This startling disclosure was seen by exactly no one. Over a year later, Newsweek still had occasion to report on this tall tale:

False as it is, the word that Kroc was a Satanist spread through Southern and Midwestern Bible Belt towns for more than a year. In some towns, customers boycotted the golden arches, and kids even quit their McDonald’s-sponsored Little League teams. [The rumor] was widespread enough to send McDonald’s vice president Doug Timberlake on a defense mission to the Birmingham, Ala., Baptist ministers conference. Armed with transcripts of Kroc’s TV appearances and testimonials from clergymen who have checked out the gossip, he has been managing to convince consumers: there is no, repeat no, McDevil on Ray Kroc’s menu [4].

When the selfsame rumor transferred itself to Procter & Gamble, the Phil Donahue Show confirmed that, in fact, the president of Procter & Gamble never once appeared on the show. Nor did he make any such admission in any other public forum or venue. Indeed, any CEO or president of a multinational corporation would be promptly fired by a board of directors if he or she claimed on national television to have a business relationship with the Church of Satan. Moreover, the direction of P&G’s profits, as with all public trade companies as per regulation and standard policy, is a matter of public record. All one needs to do to find out if portions of a company’s profits are going toward the Church of Satan is to consult the company’s financial documents. As any such consultation will reveal, corporation profits go to stockholders, not to religious organizations or churches favored by the higher-ups in the company.

But the credulous “sheeple” did not bother to take enough time to do any of their own homework to find out whether the rumor had any factual basis. Instead, large numbers of them promptly trashed all their Procter & Gamble products – an action of no small significance, since P&G made many household products. By tossing out anything and everything associated with the P&G name and refusing to buy any more of their products for fear of supporting the Church of Satan, religious fundamentalists nationwide were altering a whole lifestyle. Fundamentalist parents who had an affinity for washing their children’s mouths out with soap doubtless did so using soap produced by P&G. Little did they know they were employing the “Devil’s soap,” but once they were made aware of this by the evangelical rumor mill and television talk shows, they promptly amended their ways and boycotted the sinister soap.

It was also widely rumored that if one held up the Procter & Gamble logo in front a mirror, the Satanic “mark of the beast” (the number 666, as spoken of in the 13th chapter of the apocalyptic Book of Revelation in the Christian New Testament) could be seen within the swirls of the moon man’s flowing beard. Many also believed that the devil’s number was discernible when the thirteen stars of the logo were correctly connected in curving strokes [5].

This collective Type-II error of perception recalled a very similar incident that occurred in Canada in 1954. New bank notes were issued in Canada that year, bearing the likeness of the British Commonwealth’s new monarch Elizabeth II. But some Canadians thought they saw something sinister lurking in a tuft of the queen’s hair as depicted on the currency. And before long many more Canadians saw what they were told by a few to see: a depiction of a demon peering out from behind the ear of the queen’s likeness on the monies. Two years later, the Bank of Canada was forced to order bank note companies to alter the young queen’s hair such that the hair-loving demon would be concealed.

Do you see the demon hiding in the queen’s hair? Some people thought they did.

But back to our American case study: the wild rumors about the evil portents of the new P&G logo did not stop with mere pictorial fancies; a pernicious rumor starting in southern Minnesota even claimed that the logo proved the company was owned by the Moonies, the followers of Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church [6]. At one point, Procter & Gamble was bombarded with over 15,000 phone calls a month in the early 1980s from people who were afraid and/or infuriated that P&G was serving the Church of Satan [7].

Predictably, Procter & Gamble were soon forced to change their logo. The moon and stars was discontinued in 1985, just to shut everybody up. However, there are still people to this day who refuse to buy P&G products, for no other reason than that they took somebody’s misinformed word for it that the company is evil and marked with the Devil’s number.

In fact, the same specious claim about P&G’s CEO admitting to donating a portion of the company’s profits to the Church of Satan was resurrected once again in July 1999. This time around, P&G’s CEO was said to have admitted to diabolical associations on the Sally Jesse Raphael Show on Monday, July 19, 1999. This date was amended from the originally given date of March 1, 1999, which was a Sunday. The show neither tapes nor airs on Sundays, and when this was pointed out, the fear-mongers quickly “fixed” the error. The claim about P&G’s business associations with Satanism was exactly the same in all particulars, with the exception of the media venue said to air the CEO’s admission.

In responding to inquiries made about this claim on the show’s online FAQ forum, Sally Jesse Raphael not only disconfirmed the persistent rumor, but also pointed out its wild implausibility:

The rumor going around that the president of Procter and Gamble appeared on The Sally Show and announced he was a member of the church of Satan is not true. This a hoax that's been going around in one form or another for the past 20 years...only originally, it concerned the Phil Donahue Show...then evolved to the Jenny Jones Show...and now it's evolved to The Sally Show. The president of Procter and Gamble has NEVER appeared on The Sally Show...NEVER. Nor has any other person in authority at P&G. . . . Frankly, this thing has gotten out of hand. If we had this man on our show, and he had said what it's alleged he said, we would have scored a broadcasting scoop and would have trumpeted it to all the newspapers. It would have been to the show's advantage. But there was no scoop, and there were no headlines [8].

Of Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia and Triskaidekaphobia

The fear of the number 666 (hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia) is a funny thing. “The fact is that the digits 666 can be uncovered in almost anybody’s name, if you’re willing to work a little at such mischief-making,” wrote the late great mathematician and renowned skeptic Martin Gardner [9].

Gardner noted that for many decades, the Seventh-Day Adventist used biblical numerology to demonize the Roman Catholic Church. This was accomplished by numerically analyzing the Latin phrase attached to the pope, vicarius filii dei (“in place of the Son of God”), from which is derived the official title Vicar of Christ. Gardner writes, “By adding the letters that are Roman Numerals – V and U = 5 (the Romans used V for U), I = 1, C = 100, L = 50, and D = 500 – they get 666. Eventually, to their great embarrassment, the Adventists learned that the same method yields 666 when it is applied to Ellen Gould White, the name of their church’s nineteenth-century prophetess (if W, or double U, is taken as two Vs) [10].”

Using the kind of mental gymnastics employed by rabid propagators of conspiracy theorists, who saw evil numbers in many innocuous and mundane items of everyday life, Gardner demonstrated that people will find what they want to see, if they look hard enough:

It is possible to uncover 666 in the names of other leading fundamentalist preachers. By adopting the so-called Devil’s code (a favorite ploy of numerologists, whereby the alphabet is numbered backward from zero; Z = 0, Y = 1, X = 2 . . .) and multiplying each letter-value by 6, Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell’s last name adds up to 666. Billy Graham requires more elaborate numerical treatment. His initials are W.F.G. (William Franklin Graham). Using the A = 1 code, the letters add up to 36. The sum of the counting numbers from 1 through 36 is 666, and 36 = 6 x 6 [11].

Using the fundamentalist conspiracy theorists’ logic and methodology, their heroes Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart must also be agents of Satan. Gardner’s computations are as follows:

Using the A = 1, B = 2, . . . cipher, PAT adds to 37. R = 18. The product of 37 and 18 is 666.

How about Jimmy Swaggart, another Pentecostal Bible walloper? SWAGGART (A = 1, B = 2, . . .) adds to 96. JIMMY (A = 101, B = 102, . . .) adds to 570. The sum of the two numbers is 666 [12].

Even in 21st century America – a society that has fortunately seen the influence of the paragons of paranoid delusion (read Moral Majority) lose the level of influence it once enjoyed in its heyday in the 1980s – we continue to live in a culture of paranoia and fear, one in which advanced technology and centers of great learning have done little to erase the most absurd of superstitions.

The persistence of superstition shows itself every time you walk into an elevator in most skyscrapers. In an effort to accommodate the superstitious fear of the number 13, considered by a surprisingly large number of otherwise rational people worldwide to be inherently evil, or an omen portentous of bad luck, about 85 percent of all high rises in the world have no 13th Floor. There are a variety of methods used for avoiding the ominous designation of 13 in building designs, but by far the most common method is to simply omit it altogether. Thus, the “14th Floor” is in all actuality the 13th Floor. But the superstition surrounding the number 13 created such fervor centuries ago that even today, skyscraper designers continue to acquiesce to the time-honored paranoid tradition of triskaidekaphobia by just denying the provisional existence of the number entirely.

This fear is, of course, hardly a new phenomenon. In one section of his fascinating and comprehensive 1841 work Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (a classic must-read for all skeptics) the Scottish journalist and poet Charles Mackay compiled and debunked popular superstitions related to fortune-telling and omens. “If thirteen persons sit at table,” Mackay reported, “one of them will die within the year; and all of them will be unhappy. Of all evil omens this is the worst [13].” He went on to observe,

In almost every country of Europe the same superstition prevails, and some carry it so far as to look upon the number thirteen as in every way ominous of evil; and if they find thirteen coins in their purse, cast away the odd one like a polluted thing [14].

Today, over one century and a half later, similar superstitious measures can and have been observed among the general public on a daily basis. I was much amused to hear the following short but telling vignettes related by radio personality Seth Andrews, host of the popular internationally-broadcast radio show and podcast The Thinking Atheist:

“We have an ice-cream chain here in the Midwest called Braum’s. Love it. . . . And the receipt number, in large letters at the top of the receipt, was (you guessed it) 666. It was a joke . . . everybody I was with was like “Ohhh, 666!” . . . We were all laughing about it. But I grew up in a culture where 666 was the number of the Beast. There were people who wouldn’t stay in a hotel room that was 666, or the hotel wouldn’t number the room 666. Or, in any other context, they wouldn’t allow that number to come up! Or if they did see it, they would run the other way. I’ve seen people – I kid you not – who purchased something over the counter, and the total came to 6 dollars and 66 cents, and they bought a pack of gum to make the total something else! How jacked up is this world?! [15]”

Very jacked up indeed, my friend. Very jacked up indeed.

Seth Andrews has sold his immortal soul for an ice cream.

Friends, of Death No Longer I’m Afraid!

I was born on February 13, 1987. As it turned out, this day was a Friday. Consequently, I turned thirteen years old early in the year 2000, the dawn of the new millennium and a time when expectations of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the concomitant destruction of the world and its unbelievers were common among the credulous.

While this fact alone would not greatly concern even many superstitious people (many millions of people have been born on a Friday 13th), the ill-fated number 13 actually crops up everywhere around me. In the English Gematria system, an ancient system in which numerical values are assigned to words or phrases in the belief that hidden relations and connections can be uncovered, “Nathaniel Todd Dickey” (my full name as it appears on my birth certificate) equals 1363. This number reduces to 13. In the English Ordinal system of set theory, in which numbers are assigned an order type, “Nathaniel Todd Dickey” equals 184, which also reduces to 13. And in the English Reduction system, my full name equals 85, which again reduces to 13. During my junior year in higher education, the dorm room number at the university I currently attend was 213. (Second month, thirteenth day . . . coincidence?). And here's another oddity: the four digits of the year of my birth add up to 25. The ancient Mayans, it is said, possessed accurate knowledge that the world is going to end in December 2012. As of this writing, I am 25 years old. And we only have a little over two months until the world expires.

This is how easy it is to seek out and find numerical relations in an effort to create a significance and meaning that is nonexistent. This is how easy it is to delude oneself.

Even before I became a full-fledged atheist and anti-theist, I was a skeptic of claims of the paranormal and supernatural, mainly as they related to New Age beliefs and practices, UFO mysticism, astrology, psychic phenomena, alternative medicine and the like. But I too was once an all-around very superstitious individual, mainly in my preteen and junior high school years. In those days, I often dreamed of being predestined by forces beyond my control to be consigned to hellfire and denied salvation. Being raised in a loving but nevertheless very religious environment only exacerbated these fears. Reason, rationality, doubt and skepticism are the best antidotes to fear and the resultant repression of the questioning instinct that drives our species to discover and progress farther and farther away from the caves of our very early ancestors. This I have discovered for myself, and I take inspiration for my rejection of the shackles of religion and superstition from many sources, not just science and philosophy. Although I do not know much about poetry and read very little of it, I glean inspiration from verse from time to time.

In the nineteenth century, the French poet and songwriter Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780-1857) wrote an eloquent poem entitled Treize à table (“Thirteen at Table”), a poem that takes a rather philosophical approach to superstitions surrounding triskaidekaphobia. Although it is likely to impress the modern reader as archaic, I sense a genuine and relevant “moral” to be gleaned from it and applied to superstitions of today. Also, while the poem does get a little god-heavy and mysticism-laden in parts, the resulting conflicting signals detracts little from the overriding point (the poem was also written at a time when the word “God” was often used as a metaphor for nature that could be rationally studied).

In the poem, the narrator attends a dinner or some similar social function. After spilling salt, the socialite looks around the room and realizes he is the thirteenth guest. Chilled with horror, his fears are abruptly allayed when Death herself appears before him. She is an angel of light and beauty, not the monstrosity the salt-spiller had dreaded. Death proceeds to show the thirteenth guest the foolishness and irrationality of tormenting oneself with not only the fear of omens supposedly signaling the arrival of Death, but of the actual fear of Death herself. She is the friend, not the enemy, of humankind.

But I will let Béranger tell the tale:

Heavens above! at table we’re thirteen;
Look, the salt before me hath spilled;
Fatal number, ominous, I ween!
Death’s at hand; with horror am I chilled!
See, she comes! a goddess, sprite, or fay?
What! in smiles, with youthful charms displayed –
Sing your songs, and be your chorus gay:
Friends, of Death no longer I’m afraid!

Though a bidden guest she seem to be,
Though a garland round her brow may twine,
I alone can see her; ‘tis for me
O’er her head the rainbow colors shine.
Now she points to fetters that are burst;
At her breast asleep a babe is laid –
Drained my cup is; quench me, then, its thirst:
Friends, of Death no longer I’m afraid!

“Look!” she cries, “a daughter of the sky,
Hope my sister, wouldst thou quail at me?
Tell me, can the slave with right deny
Thanks, if set from chain and tyrant free?
Fallen angel, stripped by Fate below,
I with wings will have thee re-arrayed!”
Kiss us, Beauty! we’ll ecstatic grow:
Friends, of Death no longer I’m afraid!

“I’ll return; thy spirit,” she pursued,
“Shall o’erleap all worlds that float sublime,
Azure space, and flaming orbits strewed –
God ordained them – in the path of Time.
Fear not now to taste of harmless joy,
Whilst thy spirit in the yoke is stayed” –
Fleeting life in pleasure let’s employ:
Friends, of Death no longer I’m afraid!

‘Twas a vision – ‘tis all past away;
At the threshold howled a dog – she fled:
Ah! ‘tis vain recoiling in dismay;
Mortal foot the icy grave must tread.
Joyous crew, then, on the stream of Fate
Launch the skiff; our port shall soon be made –
Heaven hath numbered us – thirteen let’s wait:
Friends, of Death no longer I’m afraid! [16]

NOTES

1. Joseph Addison, Spectator No. 7, Thursday, March 8, 1711.

2. Barbara Mikkelson, “Trademark of the Devil,” Snopes.com, http://www.snopes.com/business/alliance/procter.asp (accessed 3 October 2012).

3. Feòrag NicBhrìde, “Let Sleeping Myths Lie,” The Pagan Prattle June 21, 1994.

4. “Tall Tales: McDevil Burgers?” Newsweek 23 October 1978, p. 85.

5. William Poundstone, Big Secrets: The Uncensored Truth about All Sorts of Stuff You Are Never Supposed to Know (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1983), p. 110.

6. Ibid., p. 109.

7. Jan Harold Brunvand, The Choking Doberman: And Other Urban Legends (London and New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984), pp. 169-86.

8. “Sally’s Frequently Asked Questions (page 3),” retrieved from Internet Archive Wayback Machine, http://web.archive.org/web/20030405165701/http://www.sallyjr.com/sally4/frm_sallyfaq3blue.html (accessed 4 October 2012).

9. Martin Gardner, The New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988), p. 173.

10. Ibid., p. 172.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 174.

13. Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Volume 1 2nd ed. (London: Office of the National Illustrated Library, 1852), p. 298.

14. Ibid.

15. Seth Andrews, “Harry Potter is of the Devil!” The Thinking Atheist Radio Podcast #42, 24 January 2012, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thethinkingatheist/2012/01/25/harry-potter-is-of-the-devil (accessed 1 October 2012).

16. Pierre-Jean de Béranger, “Thirteen at Table,” in William Young, ed., Béranger: Two Hundred of His Lyrical Poems Done into English Verse (New York: George P. Putnam, 1850), pp. 118-119.