What I should have learned back then, but did not, and in fact took at least another twenty years to fully learn, is that such claims are not at all about “demonic power,” “demonic possession,” or even “the Devil,” but are actually about demonization. I learned instead to no longer only imagine evil as contained in a physical thing, like a book, but rather as a colonizing alien presence that could displace human consciousness, free will, the soul.
For Guernica‘s new special issue, “Religion in America,” Scott Cheshire writes a stunning essay on the Devil and his relationship with him as a Jehovah’s Witness-raised boy.
