On demons and the crazy interview on 'Fresh Air'

by Salman Hameed

It is rare to hear a person seriously talking about demons, possessions, and other such crap on Fresh Air. But that was the case recently when Terry Gross interviewed C. Peter Wagner of New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). This is the group that had a prominent representation at Rick Perry's prayer event recently, they have been actively opposing the construction of mosques in the US, and have been excorcising demons not just from individuals, but from the entire communities. And they want to influence all pillars of the society, from government and the legal system to education and arts & entertainment.

This is insane, but you have to listen to the interview. US has always been a fertile place for the growth of (academically) interesting religions. Perhaps it is frontier myth in combination with the First Amendment that makes this such a fertile ground for such religions. While listening to the interview, I was wondering if UFO religions, such as the Raelians and Scientology, will also ever get a serious interview such as this? After all their ideas are not much more incredible than the ones espoused by the NAR. But then may be they have to gain a political clout to be taken seriously.

If you think I'm exaggerating the positions of NAR, here is a small taste of the interview:

Among the topics discussed on Monday's show are: Wagner's explanation about a recent video that has been shown on television in which he claims the emperor of Japan had sex with the sun goddess, a power of darkness headed by the kingdom of Satan, and how that resulted in the decline of the Japanese stock market... 

On the tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan being connected to the emperor of Japan having sex with the sun goddess"That happened many, many years ago, and that created a spiritual atmosphere over Japan which was an atmosphere ruled by the powers of darkness. The sun goddess is not a very nice lady. The sun goddess is a power of darkness, which is headed up by the kingdom of Satan. And so the sun goddess wants natural disasters to come to Japan. Sometimes the hand of God, which is more powerful, will prevent them. And when he decides to prevent them and when he doesn't is far beyond anything that we can predict."
"But in this case, God could have prevented that tsunami and the destruction, but he didn't. He just took his hand off and allowed these natural forces to work. And one of the background pieces of information is Japan is under control of the sun goddess."
...
On demon identification"Sometimes they know. Sometimes the demon has identified itself to the person. Sometimes you can tell by manifestations of superhuman, unhuman behavior. Sometimes you can tell by skilled deliverance ministers. My wife has a five-page questionnaire that she has people fill out before she ministers to them. So she asks the kind of questions that a medical doctor would ask to find out, to diagnose an illness. So she actually does diagnostic work on people to discover not only if they have demons, but what those demons might be."
...
On spiritual mapping to cast demons out of cities"When you talk about demons over cities, we're talking about what — sometimes what we refer to as territorial spirits, and they're more high-ranking spirits in the hierarchy of darkness and they're more powerful and they require different approaches, and it's not as easy as commanding them to leave in the name of Jesus. So sometimes there has to be repentance, sometimes there has to be — there has been bloodshed in that city that needs to be repented of, there has been idolatry in the city that has ruined the land. There's been immorality that needs to be repented of, and there are several social things that people really need to acknowledge that they're bad and repent of them and ask forgiveness. ... There are certain individuals in our whole movement that have special gifts for doing that, and they're helping lead the way in weakening the power of the spirits. We don't believe we can kill demons and sometimes we don't believe we can completely get 'em out, get 'em away from a city, but we can reduce their power. We can bind them, and then we can move strongly with the kingdom of God into the city."

Wow! Listen to the full interview here.