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In Satan's Name

JoeyDonuts

Frequencies Not Known To Normals
JoeyDonuts
Joined
Sep 11, 2008
Messages
10,536
This is an extremely difficult subject for me to bring up.

When I was a kid, my parents got involved with a church in the Tulsa area called Morningstar Church. I'd been involved in churches since I was very little, and they were all what you'd expect. Nice people, Sunday School programs, services over in time for football.

Not this one.

This one was led by a charismatic man by the name of Pastor Doug Riggs. The services typically took up about 4-5 hours on a Sunday afternoon, and several times throughout the week as well. The sermons, from what I recall, delved heavily into "spiritual warfare." This was at the height of the "Satanic Panic" some of you might recall, and this church/cult may as well have been ground zero. Despite having no formal psychological practice training, this man "diagnosed" the afflictions of his flock as being entirely the hand of Satan.

His sermons were little more than conspiracy-laden diatribes. I remember what I felt when my parents were attending this weekly marathons. A combination of boredom and fear when I was paying attention. I didn't understand most of what he said, but I too was rather mesmerized by him. And I was scared as hell. I didn't get to read Marvel Comics, or secular literature. I didn't get to listen to Depeche Mode like the friends I wasn't supposed to associate with. I couldn't even listen to ****ing jazz. One time, my parents found a stack of Marvel superhero trading cards on me.

That earned me a counseling session with this man. I don't remember what happened, and I don't think I want to.

Pastor Doug Riggs was the subject of a documentary film some years ago called "In Satan's Name." My little brother found these clips. I almost threw up when I watched them. There isn't any "extreme" content, just some NSFW language from a person supposedly in the throes of demonic possession.

I'd like to hear the community's take on this guy. I don't know why, but seeing this videos again has got me depressed as all hell.

Let me know what you think. I guess I've never really "dealt" with all of this. The portion germane to my old church starts at 03:05 into the first video and continues through the next two.





 
Thanks Joey
I hope you find the answers you need.
Are your folks still around to talk about this? That might be a good place to start too.

I can offer nothing except my thanks for sharing this with us.

It also proves to me again, that too often it is human beings (and their ego's) that through religion, can really stuff up peoples spirituality.

AAA
 
JoeyDonuts said:
This is an extremely difficult subject for me to bring up.

When I was a kid, my parents got involved with a church in the Tulsa area called Morningstar Church. I'd been involved in churches since I was very little, and they were all what you'd expect. Nice people, Sunday School programs, services over in time for football.

Not this one.

This one was led by a charismatic man by the name of Pastor Doug Riggs. The services typically took up about 4-5 hours on a Sunday afternoon, and several times throughout the week as well. The sermons, from what I recall, delved heavily into "spiritual warfare." This was at the height of the "Satanic Panic" some of you might recall, and this church/cult may as well have been ground zero. Despite having no formal psychological practice training, this man "diagnosed" the afflictions of his flock as being entirely the hand of Satan.

His sermons were little more than conspiracy-laden diatribes. I remember what I felt when my parents were attending this weekly marathons. A combination of boredom and fear when I was paying attention. I didn't understand most of what he said, but I too was rather mesmerized by him. And I was scared as hell. I didn't get to read Marvel Comics, or secular literature. I didn't get to listen to Depeche Mode like the friends I wasn't supposed to associate with. I couldn't even listen to ****ing jazz. One time, my parents found a stack of Marvel superhero trading cards on me.

That earned me a counseling session with this man. I don't remember what happened, and I don't think I want to.

Pastor Doug Riggs was the subject of a documentary film some years ago called "In Satan's Name." My little brother found these clips. I almost threw up when I watched them. There isn't any "extreme" content, just some NSFW language from a person supposedly in the throes of demonic possession.

I'd like to hear the community's take on this guy. I don't know why, but seeing this videos again has got me depressed as all hell.

Let me know what you think. I guess I've never really "dealt" with all of this. The portion germane to my old church starts at 03:05 into the first video and continues through the next two.





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He sounds like a plain ol run of the mill hard shell Baptist to me. Loud obnoxious and fanatical and so very very wrong. There is no satan, there is no God, there is no afterlife. Perhaps you need to be in counceling to rid yourself of the anxiety you suffered at the hands of this man.
 
The strange thing about the people who believe in the satanic conspiracy is that they all just self reference each other.

Sad really, the OTO temple in Chicago is proof of satanism, which it isn't. But then they all quote the same person and then they quote each other.

I believe that the temple that is shown in phptographs is closed now, but they are shown in many books about satanism.

Now they are [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_XV,_The_Gnostic_Mass]wierd[/url] and [url="http://sacred-texts.com/oto/lib44.htm]strange[/url] but they are not satanists.
(these rituals are coded sex magic, the words say one thing and mean another.)

The hatred and bigotry of cults is well established, USers just turn a blind eye to Xian cults. I was raised in Christ Science by two very nice parents, it took me twenty years to heal that harm done to me. (And Xian science isn't even hateful, just harmful.)
 
Damn, he keeps addressing the same demons and casts them out, but they keep coming back. I guess he doesn't speak with the correct authoritative name.

My mom was into this paranoia of the devil, and to some extent still is. Luckily the rest of us avoided the craziness of it all. Well, my sister is in a wierdo church, but it skipped all the boys. Must be something in the female genes.
 
Being a Tulsa native, and a former Pentecostal Fundie, I know too damned well how deeply this can mess a person up.

Joey, you have my sympathetic shoulder and my support. Those sicko bastards make me so angry. Sorry, hon.
 
Joey
I just finished the "Reason driven Life" by Price
He totally deconstructs the myths and legends of Satan
It would be a good read for you
 
Cainkane1 said:
He sounds like a plain ol run of the mill hard shell Baptist to me.
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Having been through many different Baptist denominations, I have to disagree with you here. Mr. Riggs was far beyond the typical minister you'd see in this area. Perhaps a hard-line Pat Robertson Southern Baptist would agree with himn on the "principalities and powers" philosophy, but even the most staunch Baptists around here fall well short of Mr. Riggs' extreme SRA beliefs, and sociopathic tendencies, particularly with the stuff about breaking away from the family.

I didn't see my grandparents or aunts or uncles for about eight years while my parents were going there.

There is no satan, there is no God, there is no afterlife.
Click to expand...

I've been at that conclusion myself for some time.

Perhaps you need to be in counceling to rid yourself of the anxiety you suffered at the hands of this man.
Click to expand...

I think I'm probably just going to have to confront my parents about it. It's a good time to do it, things are way different now and they've backed off of the hardcore stuff considerably. They're still dyed-in-the-wool Baptists, but that I can deal with since they don't make any attempt to prosyletize me, and haven't for about ten years.
 
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JoeyDonuts said:
I think I'm probably just going to have to confront my parents about it. It's a good time to do it, things are way different now and they've backed off of the hardcore stuff considerably. They're still dyed-in-the-wool Baptists, but that I can deal with since they don't make any attempt to prosyletize me, and haven't for about ten years.
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Be careful and safe with that. The people who were in denial when they did something are sometimes still in denial.

And it can be very painful to deal with.
 
Have you ever heard this episode of This American Life?

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1273

It's about a preacher at a pentecostal church in Tulsa, and it's one of the best hours of radio I've ever heard:
Carlton Pearson's church, Higher Dimensions, was once one of the biggest in the city, drawing crowds of 5,000 people every Sunday. But several years ago, scandal engulfed the reverend. He didn't have an affair. He didn't embezzle lots of money. His sin was something that to a lot of people is far worse: He stopped believing in Hell.
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Yeah. Pearson's kind of a pariah in this town anymore. This really is a place full of megachurches, and his used to be the biggest one around. If you've ever seen the King of the Hill episode where they end up going to a Megachurch, that's about it.
 
I have no experience with this, it sounds horrible.

The videos are downloading now, I will see them tonight.
 
At the height of the "ritual Satanic abuse" nonsense, we (in law enforcement) were subjected to a training course on "how to detect the signs of Satanic activity".

Some born-again police officer had apparently decided to cash in on the fad and had produced a series of videos and pamphlets he was hawking to departments.
Utterly sillly.
 
I feel ill watching that.
The voice-over "taking christianity back to the middle ages" is quite accurate.
 
Hey Joey, I feel for you, man...

As a kid I was never exposed to that level of lunacy in any church I attended, but I distinctly recall going over to one house after church on a Saturday (my father flirted with Seventh-Day Adventism after the folks got divorced). After lunch, we all went into the living room and the kids all sat on the floor while the adults played a record of what the End Of The WorldTM would sound like, complete with "sinners" being cast into the fires of Hell, being eternally stabbed with demon's forks, tearing out their eyes in agony, etc etc etc. :boggled:

I sat there, jaw agape, listening to this horrendous stuff. Then I looked around the room, saw all the adults (including Dad) nodding approvingly & knowingly at the "lesson" we were learning. Meanwhile, every other kid in the room was eating this crap up.

It was then I made a very firm decision to simply get the hell away from those folks. In fact, it was one of the experiences I had which caused me to question the assumed "goodness" of religious belief.

Damn, I remember it like it was yesterday - spooky2.
 
Bikewer said:
At the height of the "ritual Satanic abuse" nonsense, we (in law enforcement) were subjected to a training course on "how to detect the signs of Satanic activity".

Some born-again police officer had apparently decided to cash in on the fad and had produced a series of videos and pamphlets he was hawking to departments.
Utterly sillly.
Click to expand...

It would have been utterly silly, if not for the unfortunate fact that quite a few decent people had their lives utterly ruined as a result of this stupid moral panic. For example, the infamous Oak Hill trial.

Stupidity & credulity can seriously frak with people.
 
hi, joeydonuts. Thanks for the OP and the vids links.

Apparently the 'repressed SRA childhood experience' scam is originally sourced from a single book

http://www.members.shaw.ca/imaginarycrimes/howRAstarted.htm
In 1980, a psychiatrist and his patient published a book, advertised as a true story, about her experiences as a five-year-old child in a satanic cult in the genteel seaside Canadian city of Victoria. The book, Michelle Remembers, became a bestseller. In it, Dr. Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith Pazder (for she became his wife as well as his patient) related the sexual and other tortures inflicted on the young Michelle by a secret coven of Satanists. Dr. Pazder believed that his patient, whom he had been treating for depression, had repressed all memories of these events until, with his help, she was able to recover them by going into a trance-like state.
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