Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

Pointing and laughing at religious lunacy for more than half-a-century

Mired in medievalism: C of E still performs exorcisms but does not know how many have been subjected to them under its auspices

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WHILE many think of exorcisms as relics of the Dark Ages, they continue to be performed by religious organisations of all stripes on people who are emotionally and mentally disturbed. Children and gay people are often the target of this medieval and sometimes dangerous practice.

Writing for LiveScience in 2013, Benjamin Radford pointed out that exorcisms can have deadly consequences, saying:

In 2003, an autistic 8-year-old boy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was killed during an exorcism by church members who blamed an invading demon for his disability; in 2005 a young nun in Romania died at the hands of a priest during an exorcism after being bound to a cross, gagged, and left for days without food or water in an effort to expel demons. And on Christmas Day 2010 in London a 14-year-old boy named Kristy Bamu was beaten and drowned to death by relatives trying to exorcise an evil spirit from the boy.

The Church of England’s involvement with exorcism was the subject of a report recently published by the National Secular Society, which worked with Labour MP Sam Carling to table a parliamentary question asking how many “rites of deliverance” have been carried out by the C of E in the last decade and, of those, how many were performed on children.

The answer it got from he Church’s House of Commons representative Marsha de Cordova MP was:

No data or records on numbers or type of deliverance ministry cases are held centrally.

She added that how deliverance ministry teams operate within dioceses is “the responsibility of each individual diocesan bishop”.

The churches “deliverance ministry” guidance allows parents to consent to “formal rites of deliverance” for their children, “including those involving touch”. It may involve the “laying on of hands” or the ‘casting out of demons’.

The National Secular Society human rights lead Dr Alejandro Sanchez said:

Telling a child they are possessed by a demon is psychologically harmful. Victims and survivors of spiritual abuse have said as much. Nonetheless, the established church — an arm of the British state — continues to endorse and facilitate the exorcism of children. It should now be transparent about the numbers involved. Preferential treatment for one religious group by the state is misguided in principle. But it is even less justifiable when the Church also promotes harmful practices against children.

Last month a C of E linked parish paid a five-figure out of court settlement to a man subjected to a gay conversion “exorcism”.

Watch YouTube interview here.

Matthew Drapper, above, was told his “sexual impurity” had allowed demons to enter his body.

A 2025 survey found one in ten LGBT people have been subjected to exorcism as a form of gay conversion therapy.

Hat tip: Malcolm Dodd.

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Barry Duke

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6 responses to “Mired in medievalism: C of E still performs exorcisms but does not know how many have been subjected to them under its auspices”

  1. Broga Avatar
    Broga

    Have any atheists identified people with demons or is the discovery of demons strictly a gift of the believers?

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  2. malcolmjdodd Avatar
    malcolmjdodd

    I hadn’t realised that the obscenity of exorcising children and homosexuals by the CofE (obviously with the approval of their leader, the village-idiot Charles) continues, when will it stop?

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  3. Matilda Avatar
    Matilda

    Disgusting as this is, I kind of understand because the CofE prides itself on being ‘a broad church.’ In my 50yrs experience of attending and working in it, I realise you can believe anything or nothing to be a member. Like believing in exorcism, being a total homophobe, being divorced several times etc etc. Vicar relative has run Confirmation classes, using the bible as instruction, whilst those there, say they still believe in reincarnation, or that the bible is wrong in a lot of places or that believers should abstain from alcohol or that divorce is OK and lots and lots more, though they believe firmly they should get confirmed.

    And randomly, about the CofE, I know a woman who was sexually assaulted by the vicar with whom she stayed for a training placement before ordination. He’s been de-frocked, but, though a very intelligent graduate, she went on to become a vicar. She’s just told me she’s got a new job. She’ll front a new project in a poor area. It says it will be ‘in the anglican tradition,’ though not affiliated to the parish church there, a kind of breakaway group. So yet another evangelical sect is being formed to add to the 40,000+ already in existence. And still the moribund CofE lumbers on!

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  4. barriejohn Avatar
    barriejohn

    “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:12. RV)No one knows what all those “principalities and powers” are actually supposed to be, but many Christians believe that this nonsensical “spiritual warfare” is very real. It really motivates them.

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    1. malcolmjdodd Avatar
      malcolmjdodd

      I worked with a skilled electrician who read the bible at every break, one day I asked him what he had read and he explained that it would not be understood by me, an atheist; I took the bible, scanned the few pages that he had been reading, looked for a juicy bit of bullshit and asked him what it meant, his explanation was complete nonsense, I selected another piece, he admitted that he didn’t know, the same response for other parts. Others then asked why he read the bible when he obviously didn’t understand or comprehend what he was reading – he did it because his pastor had told him to devote all of his spare time to reading until he had completed both testaments. What a waste of a young man’s life.

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  5. Broga Avatar
    Broga

    It puzzles me how Christians can so readily refer to God being “loving.” The world God supposedly created is awash with suffering. In nature creatures can only survive by killing. Some of the most vile cruelty is caused by Christians.

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