Evangelical Religion and Hypnosis

 

The following is a creepy story about religion and implanted memories. It makes me shudder because I used to be in a fundamentalist church that did not do anything like this, but could have. I cringe to think how close I came to a fundamentalist psychological hell, the way Paul Ingram did.

In 1988, Paul Ingram, a local Republican leader in Washington state, was accused by his daughters of sexual abuse, including ritual satanic abuse, over the course of several years. No evidence has ever been found that these acts of abuse ever happened. Despite this, the daughters’ testimony was accepted as evidence, and Ingram was convicted and given a twenty-year sentence. Ingram pled guilty to the charges. Subsequent research makes it clear that these events never occurred. The memories were implanted, through deliberate or inadvertent hypnotism, by the fundamentalist church to which the family belonged. An implanted memory can seem just as real as a true memory. A church seminar leader apparently asked one daughter, Ericka, to try to remember if she had been abused. This was enough for her to “remember” that it had happened. Then the memory was implanted in Paul.

This is what religion can do, especially the fundamentalist variety that believes that Satan is everywhere and can trick you into doing things that you would normally not even want to do—that is, unless you join and give money to a fundamentalist church. The Satan hypothesis was enough to send an accusation that would have gone nowhere in a mainstream church over the edge into an ever growing series of accusations in a fundamentalist church.

It kept growing. Paul Ingram was accused of killing 65 babies in satanic rituals. And he believed that he had done so. Needless to say, no evidence was ever found. No graves. Of course, the fundamentalist church could always claim that Satan had erased the evidence. By the time Ingram was released from prison, before the end of his term, he may not have been entirely convinced of his own innocence.

Fundamentalist churches use psychological manipulation which can go to absurd lengths and destroy people’s lives. They can do this because the churches believe in a Satan who can manufacture or erase evidence. This is another example of trance logic, which is a characteristic  of hypnotism.

In addition, psychoanalysts were happy to use three-quarters of a million dollars of taxpayer money to “recover” these “hidden” memories. Fundamentalism uses psychological manipulation and implanted memories to oppress people and destroy their lives, and some unethical psychologists are willing to make money off of this phenomenon.

Everywhere You Look: Fundamentalist Megachurch Lack of Ethics

There are so many examples of evangelical Christian megachurches and blatant lapses of ethics that one hardly knows where to begin. I’m not beginning; I have no plan to do an investigative series, but to simply post one story among many. This story illustrates perfectly how evangelical Christianity is using psychological manipulation to get money from people. I can only wonder if it has anything else to offer. If they so easily lie about their business dealings, maybe they are lying about Jesus also.

This story is about Mark Driscoll, a televangelist pastor at Seattle’s Mars Hill Church. For many years and in many ways he demonstrated not only a total lack of ethics but psychological manipulation to get rich and famous. You can read the details here.

Driscoll wrote a book about how to have a wonderful marriage. Then his church paid a quarter million dollars to buy 11,000 copies of this book, thus boosting it to the New York Times best seller list. This gave Driscoll the kind of publishing fame that the rest of us can only dream of having. Then he used this fame to negotiate a multi-book deal with Tyndale House, a Christianoid publisher. (I just invented this term. Christianoid means using Christian words and images to appear Christian for purposes of fame, fortune, or manipulation.) When news broke of what Driscoll had done, Tyndale House defended him. Clearly, at least this Christianoid publisher has no interest in professional ethics or honesty. I cannot help but wonder if the way to have a wonderful marriage is to pay your spouse a quarter of a million dollars.

Of course, Driscoll got a lot of radio publicity too. As a result of Driscoll’s lack of ethics, one assistant radio producer got fed up with it and resigned. She cited an “evangelical celebrity machine.” Maybe that is what the evangelical gospel is all about: people following religious celebrities for no better reasons than they follow entertainment celebrities. Maybe evangelical Christianity is merely a form of entertainment.

There have also been several charges of plagiarism against Driscoll. Not just a sentence here or there, but large passages of his writings are stolen, maybe a word changed here or there, from authors who could only dream of Driscoll’s level of fame. Despite this, many evangelical leaders continued to defend him. The cumulative effect of Driscoll’s ethical lapses eventually caused Mars Hill Church to close. The last sermon was delivered by another famous evangelical preacher, Rick Warren, who told everyone that God had done wonderful things through Driscoll. This makes me wonder if Rick Warren sees no problem with unethical evangelicalism.