The boom in British exorcisms

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Hello and welcome back to Unheard.

I'm Florence Reed.

Today we come to you with a rather esoteric story.

Exorcism requests are rising globally.

50% of surveyed US diocese reported increased demand,

particularly post-pandemic, and the number of US exesists

has grown from 24 to 150 in 15 years.

Demand in Italy has also tripled in the last decade

with an estimated 500,000 people seeking help annually.

Membership of the International Association of Exesists

has grown from 250 members in 30 countries in 2014

to over 1,000 members across 58 countries,

so there's certainly a boom.

Gallup and Huffington Post polls indicate approximately

half of Americans believe in demonic possession

and younger generations up to the age of 27

show the highest percentage of believers 63%

compared to only 44% of those over 65,

so maybe it's Gen Z leading the charge.

Today I'm going to be joined by three experts

in the realm of exorcism.

Dr Francis Young is a historian and author of

History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity.

Reverend Dr. Jason Bray is the Dean of Land After Cathedral

and a Deliverance Minister, which is the name they give

to exorcists in the Anglican Church,

so he'll tell us exactly what it's like to actually perform

in exorcism.

And Professor Helen Hall is the Associate Professor

at Nottingham Law School and an Anglican priest.

She's one of the UK's leading experts in the intersection

of law and religious practice,

and we'll be telling us a little bit about what it means

to have a multi-faith society in which exorcisms

are not always being performed to the highest standards.

So to kick us off, I'm going to ask Dr. Francis Young

to give us a brief history of exorcism in the English Church.

Francis exorcisms are not exactly something

we associate with the Anglican Church.

We usually think of them as something done by Catholic priests

like in the film The Exorcist.

Tell us a history of the Church of England

and its relationship to exorcism.

Where did it all start?

So exorcism is a very ancient practice indeed.

It's as old as the existence of the written word

and the earliest examples that we have

are from ancient Mesopotamia.

And the Greek word that we use exorcao,

which is what our exorcism word comes from,

is to do with swearing by something.

So the idea that you swear by your gods

in order to intensify the power of a statement.

And I think that captures an element of exorcism

that is still intention today.

Is it from the world of magic

or is it something that belongs to the world of religion?

And I think the exorcism is something

which still today straddles those two worlds

of magic and religion.

And we know that ancient Jewish people

used to practice exorcism.

And of course Jesus himself practices exorcism

in the New Testament.

Although it's important to note that

Jesus' exorcisms don't involve swearing by God

because they are done through his own power

or his own claim to be the Son of God himself.

So they are different, for example,

from the exorcisms that are then conducted

by the apostles in the Acts of the Apostle

and in the Gospels themselves, sometimes by the apostles,

where they will claim to cast out an evil spirit from somebody

by the name of Jesus or by the power of Jesus.

So in other words, invoking Jesus as God

in order to perform this exorcism.

Exorcism in the way that we use it today

tends to have two different meanings at least.

And those two main meanings are, first of all,

ending the demonic possession of a person.

So the idea that a spirit has taken control of somebody

and is being driven out by those words of power.

And the second meaning, which I think is quite common

in the Church of England and in the UK,

is the sense that you are driving a spirit from a place.

So the idea of an exorcism of a haunted house essentially

where you're trying to get rid of ghosts

or you're trying to get rid of some kind of

unwelcome presence in a place.

And the church has practiced this from the beginning.

It's core to the Gospel narrative.

It's core to the practice of the early church.

It forms part of the liturgy of baptism.

So to this day, an exorcism is part of the liturgy of baptism

when a child is baptized in the Church of England

or in the Roman Catholic Church.

But that was essentially a kind of a ritualistic requirement

over time, lost its real significance.

But the exorcism of enigumins, that is to say,

demoniacs or people who are believed to be possessed

by the devil, that's something which comes back

with a vengeance in the late Middle Ages.

And it's something which is associated

with the witch trials as well.

The Reformation period, it becomes very, very popular claim.

Particularly you get the Catholic Church Protestants

counter-claiming and claiming.

They are the best at casting out demons.

And the Church of England's role in this

really kind of begins in that period

where there is an attempt to bring back the idea of exorcism

in the 1560s, early in Elizabeth's reign,

where some Church of England clergymen are saying,

well, we need to take on the Catholics at their own game.

We need to show that we've got the sacred power

to be able to vindicate our form of Christianity.

But there are others within the Church of England,

such as Archbishop Matthew Parker or John Fox,

who are deeply hostile to the idea of exorcism.

And they don't want this to be part of Anglican tradition.

And in fact, in 1604, the then Archbishop of Canterbury,

Richard Bancroft, draws up a series of canons,

which in all but name, prohibit exorcism

for the next couple of hundred years.

Theoretically, they allow an exorcism to take place

if the bishop is to use a specific license

that never happened.

No bishop ever did issue a specific license.

So effectively, that handed exorcism back

to the Roman Catholic Church

and to the dissenting free churches

who continued to practice it.

But the Church of England didn't.

And that situation continues right into the 20th century

until a priest called Gilbert Shaw,

who was an Anglo Catholic priest of Irish

and ancestry, decides to revive it

right in the middle of the blitz.

And he, in fact, carries out an exorcism of a woman

in a church in London in the middle of the war.

And after the war, he then trains up another protégé,

Max Petipier, Robert Petipier, who's later known,

who writes up essentially the foundational texts

of exorcism in the Church of England.

But people are still very skeptical of it.

And it has no official status until in 1969,

and that canon by Richard Bancroft of 1604 is abolished.

And effectively, that means that there is no law

within the Church of England, no canon

that is governing exorcism.

And that creates an absolute free for all.

So clergy can exorcise, they can do whatever they want.

If they so choose, you get televised exorcisms,

you get mass exorcisms in some churches.

It becomes a huge source of contention

until 1974, when a tragic case takes place

at Osset near Bradford, in Yorkshire,

where a man who was mentally ill

was given an exorcism which went wrong.

He then went back home, murdered his wife,

this terrible case, the Osset murder case, as it was known.

And as a result of that, the Church of England

decided that rules had to be imposed

were rather guidelines.

They were still couched as guidelines.

And in 1975, in General Synod, Archbishop Donald Coggan,

Archbishop of Canterbury, laid down

these basic guidelines for the governance of exorcism.

And essentially, it puts it in the hands of the bishop

to decide how exorcism is going to be done within their diocese.

It encourages the appointment of diocesan exorcist.

By the 1980s, that post had changed its name

and it tended to be known as a diocesan deliverance advisor.

Deliverance is the euphemism that the Church of England

prefers to use for exorcism these days.

And that person is appointed by the bishop

and can only act with the bishop's authorization.

Other clergy are required to refer any incidents

or anything that they think might require exorcism to that advisor.

And those guidelines have been refined.

So in 2012, and again, in 2024,

they were refined to their present status.

But, yeah, it remains a ministry

which the Church of England is quite cagey about

because I don't think they're keen for a great deal

of publicity about it, but absolutely it happens

and every diocese in the Church of England

all 42 dioceses has a diocesan deliverance advisor.

And is it controversial?

It sounds like it's had quite a rocky history

in the Church of England.

So as it stands today,

are there still people who regret the resurgence

of exorcism in the Church of England?

I think there are.

Yeah, so if you go back to 1975,

so in the period before Donald Coggan decided

to lay down these guidelines in general synod,

there was a campaign by Jeffrey Lamp and Donald Coupit

who were more liberal clergymen

within the Church of England of that era

to try and essentially retain

the Church of England's historic position

of not practicing exorcism,

but they were overruled.

And I think that the cultural pressures at that time

was such that there was huge demand for exorcism.

The film, the exorcist had only recently come out.

And exorcism was in the news

and the Church of England felt

that if it didn't offer this ministry to people,

they would be left behind.

And I think there's always an element

within the Church of England of tension

between responding to popular demand

and what people want and upholding

a kind of theological integrity or tradition

as it has been passed out.

And in this case,

I think it was the popular demand, which won out.

But of course, what that's done is it left the Church of England

in a position where this ministry now exists.

It can't really be got rid of now

because it's become an accepted thing that the C of E does.

And so yeah, there are certainly clergy who are skeptical

who don't want this to carry on

or are not so much skeptical,

but they find the practice of exorcism morally troubling.

And I think one issue which has come up in recent years

is how exorcism meshes

with the Church's requirements of safeguarding,

which of course requires the protection of vulnerable adults.

Any adult who says,

I believe that I'm possessed by a demon,

is it so faculty, whether that's true or not,

it's so facto that adult is a vulnerable person

because they're clearly in a position of believing something

that makes them very vulnerable to exploitation or to abuse.

And so I think that question is one which the Church of England

has struggled with, is still struggling with today.

How do you square the circle

of continuing the practice of exorcism

with the Church's commitment

to the safeguarding of vulnerable adults

and children, of course?

Critics of exorcism will often invoke child exorcisms.

There's an example of a kind of particularly abusive form

of practice.

Do you know of any examples of child exorcism

in the Church of England?

The Church of England a few years ago clearly clamp down

on this and prohibits the exorcism of any miners,

so it can't happen.

It would be impossible in the Church of England,

and if it did, it would be a very serious disciplinary offence

for any clergy who were involved.

Has it happened in the past?

Well, yes, I mean, between the early 1970s and now,

yes, there certainly were.

When I was researching for my book,

a history of Anglican exorcism,

I came across cases like this,

which I didn't include in the book for ethical reasons,

because those people might still be alive,

and therefore, even if anonymized,

that it would be ethically questionable

to report on those cases,

but in the archives that I was consulting,

there were cases of exorcism of children.

As far as I'm aware, none of the historic cases

of child abuse that have come up in the last few years

have concerned claims of exorcism,

which you might consider quite surprising,

but I think perhaps it shows that it's a fairly uncommon practice.

It, even in the height of this period,

of enthusiasm for exorcism,

there were only a few clergy who were doing this,

so it's not something which was ever, you know,

very common in the Church of England,

but yes, I think that they have historically been cases

of exorcism of children.

Are there any substantial differences

in the style of exorcism or the practice of exorcism

between what we see in the exorcist,

the Catholic version and the Anglican version?

What would an Anglican exorcism look like

as different to that Catholic version?

I think it depends on what tradition

within the Church of England you're talking about.

I mean, Gilbert, Sure, and Max Petapier,

who I mentioned, they came from an Anglic Catholic perspective,

so they were advocating and practicing

what I would characterize as the sacramental tradition

of exorcism, so heavily inspired

by the Roman ritual and the way in which exorcisms

are conducted in the Roman Catholic Church,

so kind of ritualistic.

Again, similar to what you might see in the exorcist,

although probably not as dramatic,

but there are, of course, other traditions

who are very keen on exorcism,

for example, charismatic, evangelical Christians,

so there the exorcism would still contain

those imperative form of words that kind of, you know,

begun Satan, you know,

begun in the name of Jesus and so forth,

but it would not be couched

within specific liturgical arrangements,

but would still be rooted in the reading of scripture

and things like that.

There are other traditions which are hostile to exorcism,

so traditionally the conservative evangelical tradition

within the Church of England tends to be hostile

to these kind of charismatic expressions

or enthusiastic expressions of spirituality like exorcism,

so you wouldn't find conservative evangelicals

very much in favor of exorcism.

And again, within the sort of the soft center,

if you like the Church of England,

the kind of liberal mainstream,

this is something which you won't always find,

although sometimes you will,

from a therapeutic point of view,

you will find people who will advocate the idea

that even if they're not sure

where the exorcism really does anything on a spiritual level,

they might say, well, if somebody wants it

and they feel that it is beneficial to them

and to their mental health and well-being,

then it could be one among a variety of approaches

that the Church takes towards someone's psychological healing.

So I don't think you necessarily have to be an avowed believer

in the demonic world,

necessarily think that exorcism is a good thing,

and so you will find a kind of liberal tradition

of exorcism as well within the modern Church of England.

Surely there are some more people now

who believe in demonic possession than there were,

given the sudden rise in interest in exorcism,

is it true that people are now considering

the possibility of demonic or satanic possession

where they weren't before, where they were more skeptical?

Yes, I think so.

I think that there is a comparison to be made

between our current era and the 1970s,

the 1970s being a decade,

when there was a huge upsurge of interest in the occult

and in the possibility of spiritual forces beyond our kin.

And I think that that's something which has experienced

a bit of a revival, actually.

I think that there is a, yeah,

a kind of a turn away from the kind of rationalistic way

of looking at the world that we might have seen

in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s.

And you see this also among clergy,

I think younger clergy tend to be quite serious

about the supernatural in the same way

that they're quite serious about their faith.

You know, you won't find younger clergy in the Church of England

who don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ

or who don't believe in miracles.

And that would be rare, I think.

You know, mostly they are quite serious.

And I think that that's a result of religion being

a conscious choice.

You know, if you're going to be a Christian,

if you're going to be religious,

that's quite a cultural thing to be in our society.

And so if you're going to do it,

you might as well do the full fat version.

And I think that a lot of younger clergy therefore

tend to be quite keen on the idea of theological authenticity.

Now that doesn't necessarily mean

that they're all big on demons,

but it does mean that there is a space within which

it's possible to be quite serious

about the threat posed by the demonic world.

Given that you're someone who's over the kind of trends

in the mystical, the spiritual,

is there anything else that has resurged

or become popular at the same time that exesent have?

Yeah, well, I think that it is something which is paralleled

in other spiritual traditions,

a kind of resurgence of interest in the supernatural.

For example, you know, there's growing numbers of people

who would identify as contemporary pagans.

You've got growing numbers of people

who would identify with occult practices

or spiritual practices without necessarily joining a group.

And I think, you know, with the rise of TikTok

and social media and that the idea that you can simply

find out what's going on out there

but without joining something.

That's a new development.

You know, if you go back to the 1970s,

if you wanted to know about this stuff usually,

you had to sort of sign up by mail order and find out,

you know, join a society or get initiated into something

and, you know, join a group.

And I think, you know, people are very averse

to that kind of, you know, belonging to groups,

especially post-COVID.

And yet there is this new space in which it's possible

to, you know, find out about all sorts of stuff.

And so clergy themselves will say that, you know,

a lot of the people who are asking for help

have got in trouble as a result of something

which they, you know, saw on YouTube or saw on TikTok

and they tried at home and then they became disturbed

by, you know, some perceived kind of spiritual influence

that resulted from that.

And so there is this kind of spiritual marketplace out there

which is pretty chaotic.

And it, yeah, it causes some people quite a lot of distress.

This episode is sponsored by the new film, October 8th.

October 8th offers a look at the real life impacts

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and the eruption of anti-semitism on college campuses,

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to permeate US institutions and examines the tsunami

of online anti-semitism and disinformation unleashed

by Iran, China and Russia.

With the goal of dividing American society.

The film features expert insights from the likes

of Barry Weiss and Douglas Murray.

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You mentioned COVID there.

Why was it the zenith of this explosion

of alternative spirituality?

I think that it's simply that people had time on their hands

to reflect on the meaning of things

and on the spiritual or on the unseen.

And people also spent a lot of time in their own homes

in one particular space.

And so, for example, there was a huge upsurge

of people reporting haunted houses

simply because they were spending so much time

in their homes that they were becoming aware

of things which they interpreted as a presence

of a spiritual haunting.

But I think also, you know, the same way

that people have turned to conspiracy theories

or they've turned to alternative spiritualities

as a result of spending a bit too much time online.

It's a big pandemic.

So, you know, people have developed

these kind of spiritual speculations

and had the space and the time to reflect on these things

which in some cases has been a good thing.

In other cases, it has caused people pain and distress

and led them down pathways which they now regret.

But yeah, I think it was a kind of a strange time

when people turned inward

and therefore it has had these kind of spiritual consequences.

What might this moment suggest about where we're going?

Have there been points like this in history

where exorcism has suddenly become really trendy again?

Where do you think we might be headed

if we are having a sudden revival of interest in exorcism?

Yeah, well, I've argued in my books

that exorcism is associated with crisis

and it peaks in times of crisis for the church.

The reformation being a notable example of that,

you know, again, around the time of the French Revolution,

you know, you've got a peak of exorcism there

with a kind of a crisis in identity

for Christianity and the church.

And I think we see the same thing in the 1970s

when again, the church is finding an identity for itself

in a rapidly secularizing society.

And I think that there is a crisis point for the church now

in the sense that secularization has to some extent

ground to a halt.

It no longer appears as those secularization

will just continue forever and consume Christianity.

It seems that religion is making a bit of a comeback,

but at the same time, it is forced to find

a new identity for itself in a religious marketplace

where people are not necessarily

schooled in one particular religion

and they don't have that background

and they can choose whatever they want.

You know, anything's out there for you to adopt

if you choose to do so.

And therefore Christianity is competing

with other religions and other spiritual traditions

for hearts and minds and spirits

that the church itself would believe.

And so, yeah, I think that there is a sense of crisis,

of uncertainty about the future of, you know,

potential, you know, positive futures for the church

where church attendance grows,

whether it's kind of a revival,

but also concerns about dwindling congregations

and declining churches and declining national influence

when it comes to the Church of England.

And with the Church of England,

I always get the sense that it clings to exorcism

as one way to make itself relevant

to deliver a service, if you like,

to the population of England,

which no one else can deliver in quite the same way.

And therefore, that's one of the lynch pins

that kind of keeps exorcism in place

as something which the Church of England offers.

Great, Francis, thank you so much.

I really appreciate your time.

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Next up, we are going to be joined

by Reverend Dr. Jason Bray,

somebody who has actually performed exorcisms

or as he calls them deliverances

as Dean of Landf and a Deliverance Minister.

He's an Anglican priest and he joins us from his home now.

Could you just share how one gets into performing exorcisms?

It's not something we usually associate with the Anglican Church.

We all know that the exorcist is about Catholic priests.

So how do you as an Anglican priest end up performing exorcisms?

We tend to call it deliverance ministry,

but what we tend to do is we deal with the paranormal.

And most of us get into it by having some sort of experience.

In my case, it was an experience that happened

actually in my own home.

So it was the house that we moved into

when I was a curate.

And we just had a whole series of weird experiences

happening there.

And I realized that actually maybe this was the thing

that I really needed to explore.

And so what's a normal act of deliverance like?

If you're called out for a deliverance job,

what does it look like?

What are you doing?

What we're doing is basically inviting

God in a sort of quite elaborate way

to deal with the situation.

When a call comes in, it goes actually,

the first thing it does, it goes to the bishops

so it can be logged for insurance purposes.

So we're ensured by our bishops.

And then the case will come back to us

and we have conversations with people

usually on the phone first, go out to see them

and try to work out what's going on.

One of the things that we always try to do

is to sort of bless the house, bless them maybe.

So that will involve blessing holy water.

So you bless the water, you bless salt,

mix them together, and then we,

so sprinkle holy water around the house,

come back, say the Lord's Prayer,

also providing a huge amount of reassurance

while we're doing it.

What are the most common reasons

for requiring or requesting deliverance services?

Why do people need these deliverances?

There are things to do with houses.

So people see stuff around the house

and stuff moves around.

So pulting iced activity is a really common thing.

Often associated with children, with teenagers,

with people who aren't very good at opening up about things,

people going through stress.

And we reckon that it's probably an extreme stress reaction

that somehow things build up

and that they earth themselves in physical objects.

So what we need to do in that case

is to provide huge amounts of reassurance

and, so to say, also bless the house as well.

And then occasionally people will see things around

anti-brander keeps appearing on the landing upstairs

in her 90s when she really shouldn't be there.

She died 10 years ago.

So that's something that we also deal with.

I also get lots of calls.

So people are asking me to exercise them properly

because they're demonically possessed.

What would be the threshold to reach a point

where you would say, yes, we will perform an exorcism?

What symptoms might someone have that suggests

that they are a good candidate for exorcism then?

What I'm actually looking for

is three very specific things.

So we're looking for somebody who has preternatural strength.

So basically if they can do things

that they really shouldn't physically be able to do,

that's one.

The second thing would be preternatural knowledge

of stuff that they shouldn't know.

So if you walk in and somebody knows your browsing history,

and those you've got gambling addiction,

those you've got wife and family somewhere

that you're not telling your present life and family

about all that sort of stuff.

If they know that, that might be another symptom.

The other one is a weird knowledge of languages

that they've never studied.

One of the cases that somebody reported

was there was a little old lady who lived in Cornwall.

She never left Cornwall.

She lived there for the whole of her life.

She was able to speak colloquial Arabic.

The deliverance minister was able to say,

actually, yeah, I studied Arabic and this is,

you know, from Upper Egypt.

So we're looking, ideally for all three of those things,

each diocese in England and Wales.

And there are 48, I think, dioceses in England and Wales

would have a team of people that would go out and do these things.

What does it tell us about the change

in the way people are perceiving Christianity

that does seem to be more demand for exorcism

or deliverance in this current moment?

Are we moving backwards in a kind of timeline of Christianity?

Or is this just a new phase?

There is something happening.

So all the research seems to suggest

that people are much more interested in religion

and are much more interested in some of those aspects

of religion that the Anglican Church

really hasn't been good at explaining.

You know, the supernatural healings are, you know,

sort of things that people are looking for.

They're looking for authenticity and authenticity

in spiritual experience as well.

There does seem to be a sort of change

in this current generation, generation Z,

in that sort of looking for something

that they're looking for meaning somewhere along the line.

I suppose the other whole idea with the supernatural

and the paranormal is something that's actually,

yeah, become much more acceptable in today's world.

Previous generations, certainly Christians

haven't helped themselves.

So I was reading an article earlier on today that said,

well, Christians today don't believe in the supernatural.

In fact, most Christians today don't believe in God.

They just believe in being nice to people.

And I think we've moved away from that sort of idea.

Christians today are much more likely to be up front

about the fact that they believe in God

as an external entity,

but also much more interested in some of those deeper questions

that we've sort of lost sight of over the years.

I'm gonna ask you the really cheeky question.

I'm sure you get asked at every dinner party you go to,

which is what's the most kind of memorable deliverance job

that you've been on?

Somebody got in touch with me and told me that her mum

was experiencing something utterly weird.

So she could feel rats under the bed clothes

when she went to bed at night.

In fact, she felt that the rats were actually eating her insides.

Her daughter would go in and they could almost see them

seething under the bed clothes,

but they couldn't really understand what was going on.

When they took the bed clothes off, there was nothing there.

And when I caught there, they were really uptight.

There was something going on there I couldn't work out.

So I laid out my salt, my holy water in their kitchen.

And I was standing there just saying the prayers

when the light started to go off one by one above me.

So went around, blessed the house, blessed them,

said some prayers for them and just sort of walked away

and thought, this is a bit weird.

The daughter came up to me and said,

thank you very much for coming round.

Just to let you know that mum is waiting for a diagnosis

for bowel cancer.

She's just had some tests,

but she didn't want to tell you about that

because she's a bit embarrassed about the whole thing.

And it was just sort of one of those cases

where I thought, actually that's probably what's going on.

But somehow, sort of her anxiety about her bowel cancer,

which you couldn't really talk about,

had manifested itself in the physical sensation

of rats eating her.

And then when they looked at the bed clothes

and they could see the rats actually moving around.

Interestingly enough, I bumped into the daughter

a little while afterwards and she said,

just to let, you know, moments of the all clear,

it wasn't, it wasn't that at all.

And she said, and the rats have gone as well.

We're speaking to other experts on exorcism

and deliverance today just to get different perspectives.

And one of their concerns about the rise in interest

in exorcism is the way in which it is not evenly spread

across cultures and that some religious traditions

have, let's say, looser practices

when it comes to the ethics.

Is there a risk to the sudden uptake

and enthusiasm around exorcism in this country

where not everything is regulated in the way

that the Anglican Church is?

Yes, I think there is, actually,

because exorcism, as such, the expelling of a demon

will only work if there is a demon present.

So as I said, you know, we are looking

for those three very specific things.

They are remarkably rare.

But it would be really easy for me to still get in touch

with people and say, yeah, yeah,

I can round out here, quick exorcism.

Well, I know perfectly well that it's not going to work.

So yeah, we are deeply concerned about these things.

The whole idea of conversion therapy as well, you know,

they're sort of expelling demons of homosexuality

from people that's not a form of demonic possession.

So it simply won't work.

You can go online, you can get a got online exorcisms.

There is also a mental health epidemic out there

and in a sensitive treating mental health

as if it's a paranormal thing,

events just simply not going to work at all.

Do you think that potentially we are looking down

a track of a future which involves

much more religious esoteric?

Is this a new direction that we are headed or is it a phase

that we're going to kind of come out of

in the way that there have been many faces in the past?

It is remarkably difficult to tell.

So nobody was expecting this to happen.

The Bible Society produced a report called

The Quite Revival because they were quite surprised

by what they were seeing.

And in a sense, we weren't expecting this

so we don't know how it's going to go.

And it's possible that there will be an increase

in interest in spirituality.

For me, I feel that there needs to be a balance

between doctrine, between what the church believes

and also the teachings of Jesus,

they're sort of love and community teachings

and also the spirituality that underpins it all.

I think it's all part and part of the same thing.

So maybe this is a way of recapturing some of the

spirituality that the church had in the past

but has lost that who knows where we go from here.

I think that's a good point.

And thank you, Jason.

I really appreciate it.

And last but not least, we're going to be joined

by Professor Helen Hall and Associate Professor

at Nottingham Law School.

She is going to help us understand the landscape

of contemporary Britain and its exorcisms

because it isn't just the Church of England

that's had a resurgence in interest.

There has also been much evidence that other faiths

are engaging in this practice as well

and sometimes without the guardrails

that the Church of England offers.

She joins us now.

Welcome, Professor Helen.

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I suppose we should start with the obvious,

which is do you concur with the evidence

that seems to suggest that there is a rise

in interest in exorcisms in this country

and in fact across Europe and America?

I think that has definitely been a rise in the amount

that we've talked about and seen of exorcisms.

And that's really been a continual trend

with some ups and downs,

but from the sort of 60s and 70s onwards,

when there were some notorious, of course,

the exorcist but various other well-known

sort of blockbuster films,

the whole phenomenon of the satanic panic,

which hasn't gone anywhere.

There was basically a conspiracy theory

that has been completely debunked

by every reputable commentator of real supposed cult

that were meant to be sacrificing children to satan

and things like that.

And that's unfortunately circled back around

into things like the QAnon conspiracy.

So it's been in the popular culture for a long time.

And of course, we've had COVID

where people have had a lot longer to spend time

on the internet and exchanging and finding ideas.

We also live in a more multicultural society now

than we did previously.

So that's had an influence on the kinds of exorcism

that are being practiced.

Traditionally speaking for a lot of the history

of the Church of England,

it wasn't a mainstream part of Church of England practice

for quite a lot of centuries.

So it was something that was practiced more

from other groups.

It's always been part of, for instance,

a lot of Islamic traditions

have exorcism.

And obviously a greater diversity of society

has meant that we have seen different groups,

of course, in a different way.

We've seen a rise in things like neo-paganism,

alternative spiritualities

are being practiced more as well.

So we have these new religious streams going along

as well as greater access to information.

What is it then that has caused British Anglicans

who previously might not have sought out an exorcist

to look for one?

It has always been something

that has been permitted with an Anglican tradition.

So the Anglican Church

took a very stereotypical fence-sitting kind of position

on it at the Reformation,

where we basically said,

well, it's not something we do routinely,

but if you get permission from the bishop

then you can do it.

So it's never been a completely alien thing.

And it has been something that we've offered increasingly.

I mean, with an Anglicanism,

we've always been very careful about how we've done it.

And we've always done it within consultation

with medical professionals.

We've always been very careful

to have proper safeguarding and guidelines around things,

at least since some incidents in the 1970s.

And we want to make sure that if we do offer this,

we do it in a very responsible and considered way

because if it's done without proper thought,

you can inadvertently do a great deal of damage to people

because if somebody has a mental illness

and you encourage them in the narrative

that actually what's going on with them is a demon

and your exorcism is not going to cure an illness

like schizophrenia,

you can just make them even more distressed

than they were previously

because you've encouraged them to believe

that this is something demonic.

You fail to help and you leave them with the idea

well, now I'm at the mercy of this demon

and nobody even the church seem able to help.

In terms of people's welfare,

there is a real risk in carelessly carrying out exorcism.

As there is societal question here

around the way in which we care for people

with mental health problems

that lead to those kind of delusions.

I mean, I certainly think we are much more able

to talk about our struggles

than we were in previous generations

and maybe even 10 or 15 years ago.

And people do that in different ways,

put things across in different ways

and I think willingness to say,

I have a problem, I'm frightened

that I can't have an impact.

Sometimes as well, people might have had

a negative experience of conventional medicine.

There is a lot of suspicion around conventional medicine

and a lot of unhelpful conspiracy theories.

And in the same way,

some people might choose to reject vaccines,

they might also want to reject psychiatric care

because they don't trust science

and the medical establishment as much.

So that could be another reason why some people

are seeking alternative explanations

and alternative ways of dealing with problems.

Why do people seem to be turning away

from mainstream religiosity and biblical texts

and turning towards these alternative texts,

alternative spiritual practices?

What can that tell us about the society we're in?

I mean, it's really interesting.

I mean, obviously there's been a sort of slow decline

in participation in organized religion

in the last sort of 200 years or so.

Although the narrative of its decline and death

has definitely been exaggerated

in that it's, I think, quite a lot of people

at the beginning of the 19th century

thought that churches will all have shriveled up

and died a long time ago.

Also, we have lots of fascinating evidence

from historians, including historians

of the relatively recent past,

that people have always sought out alternative spiritualities

cunning folk, for instance,

people within their local communities, even in urban areas.

So people have often stereotyped ideas

of kind of like, you know, which type of figures

and villages in the distant past.

But often even in urban areas in the late 1930, 20th century,

you got people who in exchange for money or favors

might be willing to tell your fortune, for instance,

might be willing to effectively curse

somebody who'd upset you.

So this isn't, all of a sudden,

people have started doing these out there

things that they weren't doing in the past.

It's always been there.

I think it's become more acceptable

to be interested in alternative spiritualities.

I think for a lot of the 20th century,

that would have been seen as, you know,

a bit socially shameful and embarrassing.

I think maybe people just feel a little bit more

of a permission to explore other things now.

Does Phil striking the old school, though,

the kind of vision of the priest turning up

at the house of the demonically possessed?

Is the modern exorcism what I'm imagining?

It's definitely not like that.

In the sense of, certainly with an Anglicanism

and to be fair also within Roman Catholicism,

I think that's important to emphasize.

A priest would not just turn up at somebody's house

to turn that they were possessed by a demon

and then start shouting at them in Latin.

Basically, that's not what really happens.

There would be a great deal of conversation beforehand

trying to work out what was going on.

Most of the time, we would conclude that actually,

this is not something that's appropriate for an exorcism.

We would encourage people to try and seek out medical care

and possibly other therapies and ways forward

that might be right for them.

If we did, in either case, decide that exorcism

might be appropriate, that would be sense checked

with other experts within the church.

It wouldn't be something that just somebody

would go off as a maverick and do.

And it would be done in a very gentle, calm way

with the minimum of publicity.

It's fair to say, though, that other religious traditions

do things differently and have different approaches.

And there are some Christians, for instance,

and there are others from other traditions who'd say,

well, we have to respond.

And our narrative is that this person is genuinely

in the grip of an evil spirit.

And it was the right thing to do.

And basically, yes, I am a hero in this situation.

And what I did is an accordance with my religious beliefs.

It's an accordance with the religious beliefs

with the person who received it.

And who were you to question the validity of that?

And this is a really difficult question.

And it's one of the things that a lot of my research

is concerned about, really.

How do we balance on the one hand respecting individual freedom

and saying, people have a right to practice

whatever faithful spirituality they want to?

Doesn't matter if other people think it's weird.

They have that dignity and that freedom

as adults in a liberal democracy.

From on the other hand, saying, but we

don't permit vulnerable people to be abused and manipulated.

And at what point is it right for us to come in and intervene?

And obviously, the fear of cultural insensitivity

plays a part here in that if you've

got a multi-ethnic society in which

different religions have connections to different communities,

then the government might be wary of jumping in

and trying to intervene in what could potentially

be an abusive or exploitative situation

because of those cultural sensitivities.

Is that something you find in your research?

Yes, it is.

And it's a really difficult thing.

There are instances of it going wrong both ways.

In the sense of there are instances

of things being perceived as problematic or dangerous

or worrying when actually within a particular culture,

they are just accepted and relatively normal parts of life.

And on the other hand, there are instances

of intervention not happening.

I mean, the most tragic and one of the most

high profile was the death of a little girl

called Victoria Kimbea at the beginning of the 21st century.

And she was murdered by family members

in an informal fostering arrangement

that she was living with her great aunt and the partner

of this woman.

And they effectively tortured and killed the little girl.

Now, there was a lot going on in the situation.

There were a lot of child protection failures at the time.

But part of their narrative, what they were doing,

had to do with cultural beliefs about spirit possession,

essentially.

One of the reasons why the authorities

didn't intervene in a timely way and didn't save this little girl

was a failure to understand and a fear of being perceived

as racist or culturally insensitive.

But unfortunately, this backfires horribly

and this little girl isn't saved in circumstances

where perhaps a white child would have been

because at a much earlier point,

someone might have been willing to say,

this is alarming, this isn't appropriate here.

And so when these people in positions of authority

who should have noticed that this was going on saw the signs,

they actually projected their own vision

of what was normal in this culture

as being an element of the religious zealousness

of that household was that the abuse

was kind of downstream from that

and therefore to intervene in that situation

would be to be insensitive to the culture

of the people in that house.

Yes, basically they made assumptions

and they projected their own fears and ideas

of what was going on and therefore didn't correctly

make the judgment call.

I think it's fair to say that there has been

a lot of learning since then.

Certainly, various police forces have done a lot of work

trying to train professionals.

I think the social work profession has done a lot of work.

There was a national working group

on spiritual and ritual abuse which was set up

which is still carrying on which I'm still involved with.

So we have made a lot of effort

in the last quarter of a century

to try and avoid such tragedies.

However, is spiritual and ritual abuse still a problem?

Absolutely it is and there is still definitely work to be done.

And what do you think that work is?

Like what do you think the next stages are

in terms of safeguarding young people,

vulnerable people in communities where demonic possession

might actually just be a good excuse

to enact abuse or exploitation on them?

I think a lot of it has to do with education and empowerment.

So I think getting faith communities on board

to ensure that good safeguarding

is treated as something that's important across the board,

across faith and spiritualities and traditions.

I'm in favor of encouraging voluntary guidelines

on exorcism that perhaps could be taken up across the board.

I also think it's very important to educate people

of all ages but including young people

so that they can spot red flags.

If somebody is offering you some kind of spiritual intervention,

how is it being offered, for instance,

are they encouraging you to carry on talking to other people

to family members?

Are they encouraging you to carry on going to your GP?

Or are they doing things which make you feel uncomfortable?

Really it's part of a bigger conversation

of empowering individuals to recognize when things aren't right

and to feeling it's a appropriate question

and knowing where to seek help if they need to do that.

Great, Helen, thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

Well, there you have it.

Three experts on exorcism giving us some reasons

why there might have been an uptick since the pandemic,

in interest, in spiritual deliverance.

If you are interested in this sort of esoteric content,

then why not subscribe to the Unheard channel?

There'll be plenty more where this came from.

Thanks for watching. This was Unheard.

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