Deliver us -From evil? Guest post by Janet Fife

‘I’m afraid you have a resident nasty.’ I was sitting in an Oxford vicarage and these shattering words were addressed to me.

I had been to see Mrs. Vicar a couple of weeks before for counselling about the sexual abuse that had been inflicted on me as a child, and she had prayed for emotional healing. This was a follow-up appointment, and she was concerned that I showed no improvement. Worse, I was beginning to feel angry about the abuse. In her mind the equation was simple: I hadn’t responded to prayer, but had actually got worse; therefore I was hosting one or more evil spirits. Unfortunately, she said, she wasn’t in a position to do anything about it that day. She explained that she never tackled ‘deliverance’ ministry on her own, and her husband was away leading a series of missions. She would make another appointment for me when he got back.

I went home feeling even worse about myself than before – and now frightened, too. There was something evil within me that this experienced woman of God was afraid to tackle. How was I to cope with that knowledge? How was I safe to be with my own self? I was desperate for Mr. Vicar to return so I could be free of the fear and self-loathing induced by the thought of having a ‘demon’.

Mr. Vicar came back, and I heard nothing about another appointment. Weeks went by as my emotional and psychological state grew worse. I became so desperate that there seemed no alternative but to kill myself. One afternoon I was thinking how best to do it when the phone rang. It was a friend calling for a chat. That call – an unlikely one given it was long distance and at the expensive rate – saved me. She convinced me I needed to phone the Vicars straight away, tell them how I was, and insist on an early appointment.

A few days later I was again in the vicarage’s rather gloomy sitting room. Mr and Mrs Vicar were both there, as arranged. With them was a second local vicar, who I was told would be observing. I remember nothing of what followed, except feeling uncomfortable and very vulnerable. Certainly I felt no great improvement as a result of it. The experience occurred in the 1980s, but I still vividly remember how damaging it was.

To many readers this whole episode will seem strange and absurd. But Mr. and Mrs. Vicar were both intelligent and highly educated, and genuinely believed they were helping me. Mr. Vicar went on to lecture at a theological college, and helped to train Anglican ordinands, no doubt in a similar approach to the one he and his wife used with me.

For those from the Charismatic wing of the Church – not just the Church of England but all churches – belief in demons is not only real, but very much part of the way they live out their faith. For many years I was part of this scene myself. I took a short course in deliverance ministry at Ellel Grange (then in its very early days), and was a curate at a large charismatic church. Ellel taught that the experience of being abused was in itself an opportunity for demons to enter. According to Ellel there were many such ‘entry points’, ranging from having a Masonic ancestor to having touched a dead body. What did that mean for nurses and undertakers, I wondered?

The church where I was curate both taught and practiced John Wimber’s methods of ‘power healing’. This, too, often involved ‘deliverance from evil spirits’. I hadn’t encountered Wimber’s teachings before, and my questioning attitude did not make me popular in some quarters. I was not alone in my doubts, however; two doctors in the congregation (one a neurologist) told me that Wimber’s healing technique was medically classed as hypnotism. In other words, it was the power of suggestion rather than the Holy Spirit which was at work. I started on a quest to understand the interplay between the spiritual, emotional, and psychological aspects of human personality – a quest on which I’m still engaged.

My concern in this blog is not with the thinking behind demonology and deliverance ministry, but with its effect on those who are exposed to it. I was advised by a colleague’s wife that Body Shop products were ‘demonic’, because they were often sourced from the developing world where ‘pagan’ religions predominate. The same woman expressed anxiety that there was a gap in our round-the clock prayer chain just as children were coming out of school. This worried her because she felt that God wouldn’t protect them unless someone was specifically praying for their protection at the time. A friend was told by an Ellel staffer that a paisley scarf was ‘demonic’. Those who see demons everywhere in this way live fearful lives, and become limited in many ways. Imagine having to consult an ‘expert’ regarding perfectly ordinary everyday purchases, in order to avoid becoming subject to demonic activity! Imagine worrying that your loved ones are only ‘protected’ if someone prays the right prayers, and at the right time!

The belief in the prevalence and influence of evil spirits seems to have gained predominance among those who practice inner healing and ‘prayer ministry’. John Wimber’s Vineyard network of churches has grown. Ellel Ministries have expanded in the 30 years since I first encountered them. Other schools of healing that heavily emphasise deliverance ministry have been developed, such as Sozo and Elijah House. All of these have practitioners who operate within churches of the main denominations; in retreat houses, conferences and other centres. Some mainline denominational churches are listed as Sozo ‘resource churches’.

There are serious concerns with this approach to healing ministry. It can leave the subject feeling vulnerable and worse about themselves than before, as happened to me. Emotions and responses which are not only natural but healthy, such as anger at being betrayed and abused, are labelled as demonic and disowned. This constitutes a barrier to genuine healing, since being able to feel the anger is a key part of the survivor’s journey to recovery. ‘Difficult’ aspects of the personality – what is often called the ‘shadow side’ – are split off and disowned rather than faced and owned. This is not the path to integration and wholeness. It is certainly not the way to spiritual and psychological wellbeing. And deliverance ministry involves a power imbalance between the person being prayed for and those doing the praying, which is intimidating.

I came to recognise that deliverance ministry, and methods of inner healing which involve it, is often a form of spiritual abuse. It is time the churches woke up to this, and began to discourage its practice.

About Stephen Parsons

Stephen is a retired Anglican priest living at present in Cumbria. He has taken a special interest in the issues around health and healing in the Church but also when the Church is a place of harm and abuse. He has published books on both these issues and is at present particularly interested in understanding how power works at every level in the Church. He is always interested in making contact with others who are concerned with these issues.

22 thoughts on “Deliver us -From evil? Guest post by Janet Fife

  1. Dear Janet – What a life experience to go through. I love William Cowper’s hymn “Sometimes a light surprise” especially the end of the first verse where he speaks about the soul being granted “a season of clear shining to cheer it after rain”. May God bless you and grant you that as you continue in faith.

  2. Amen. I’ve been involved in the deliverance ministry, too, and been on a course. Most if what I was taught was much more “sensible” and low key than your experience. Not being alone, for example, is good counsel. Praying that someone will be freed from evil that oppresses them is much more neutral, and I should think, more helpful than jumping in with talk about demons and possession. Much of your experience sounds naive and superstitious to me. I’ve met people like that, too. The idea that there are people in ordained ministry who are so superstitious bothers me a great deal, although it isn’t a surprise. But the idea that there are people in ordained ministry who are totally insensitive to the effect being told they are possessed will have, and even that they don’t remember that they are supposed to be following up something important, is almost more serious. It nearly cost you your life. Again, I’m not really surprised, but at another level, gobsmacked at the people who get through the selection process.

  3. Thank you, Janet, for reminding us of experiences that to many do now, I hope, feel absurd.
    I was struck by your reference to the power imbalance between the person being prayed for and those doing the praying, as this is something I have often felt when I have received responses from the church hierarchy to my complaints about them or their colleagues. Rather than pray for me I’d much prefer that the person simply treats me with respect and carries out their responsibilities properly.
    Offering prayers often seems like a convenient way of ignoring responsibility and failing to take appropriate action. In my view, in many of the situations where someone says or writes “I’ll pray for you” it is actually a form of abuse unless the speaker has also made genuine attempts to meet the person’s needs.
    I’m sure you are right to be concerned with the effect of deliverance ministry on those who are exposed to it: my concern is also about the effects on many of those who are glibly told that their friend or church is praying for them.

  4. Good post Janet. Very grateful that you have said something to remind the church that survivors of this type of abuse are still here and still hurting. Going through this most abusive of ministries after having suffered childhood abuse is unspeakably damaging. I don’t know if you have ever tried to challenge the church on the lack of regulations surrounding deliverance ministry, it is a godforsaken task, absolutely no one listens.

    Though I was told by the exorcist for the Church of England that what I experienced were exorcisms this was quickly diluted to ‘deliverance ministry’ after I had a psychotic breakdown because of it. I assume this is because regulations around exorcisms are fairly well prescribed, and none were followed in my case, but deliverance ministry is largely unregulated.

    This abuse and its shocking aftermath remains a closely guarded secret in the church so please keep speaking out. I do wish there was a support group for this type of abuse but your post made me feel less alone so thank you.

  5. Deliverance is a more inclusive term. You don’t have to tell someone they are possessed! When it comes down to it, Trish, nothing in the CofE is regulated in one sense. That is, there are regulations, but if someone doesn’t abide by them, nothing happens!

  6. Thanks Athena no one has explained it to me as simply as that before, so in the Bible what is an example of deliverance ministry and exorcism?
    Janet is right there is a worrying resurgence in this type of ministry at a time when the rest of society is trying to get us all talking about mental health issues so that it loses its stigma. How can the church think this means it is acceptable to tell people they have a demon without any medical supervision? In my case the vicar actually shouted at me for going to my GP because it showed I didn’t have enough faith.

    1. Steve Lewis below makes some good points. Trish, I’d hate to attempt a tutorial on a forum such as this with so many well informed posters! I found that using the term “deliverance” as a general term helped me. Steve describes it as a wedge . I remember a phrase that the vast majority of deliverance takes place quietly and almost invisibly in silent prayer. Now that puts the showy stuff in its place!
      Biblically, well I’m not sure you can make direct comparisons. Let’s face it, most of the Biblical incidents are certainly mental illnesses or things like epilepsy. So, you can just pray to be delivered from your illness. That could be quite dramatic in itself.
      But I would be disinclined to completely discard the idea of something “other”. But all the guidelines I received included safeguarding, common sense, never being alone, never telling people they have been cured, never taking them away from medical care. God’s healing often comes through trained professionals.
      Why is it that there are so many clergy practising this stuff without the proper training? As I said, if they break the rules, nothing happens.
      Hope that helps, Trish.

      1. Thanks Athena, it seems that the deliverance ministry you talk about is far more gentle than the speaking in tongues and shouting and naming of demons that I experienced. The references that Leslie included, though dated are, I feel, still relevant in understanding the complex psychology behind this ministry.
        I do feel that, however gently done, telling someone who has experienced child abuse that a demon may have entered at this point is irresponsible, if they have not queried this themselves. The trauma of abuse is multi-layered and being given such information can trigger psychosis, as in my case, or even suicide. Would Janet or I have been told that our demons had entered during our abuse if we had been abused by the clergy I wonder!

  7. Oh dear, some of you seem to have had terrible experiences of which I know nothing although I am well aware of the spiritual and theological areas out of which they come. There have been many good things that have come out of the charismatic tides over the last generation but what I call simplistic “popism” is not one of them. What I mean by that is the tendency to accept whatever “pops” into the mind as being of God or else mutatis mutandis of the Devil. This acceptance makes one powerless and in thrall to supposed spiritual forces over which one either has a duty of instant obedience (it is of God) or else a feeling of desperation and imprisonment (I am demonised).
    With the rise of interest in mental health recently we could be tempted to a rationalistic understanding of everything human though I think C.S. Lewis had a better take on the subject when he said “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them” on top of which I would also want to add another of his sayings, “The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs”. I’m afraid the latter has not always been heeded by the charismatic element in the Churches.
    An in-depth study on the character of Saul in the Old Testament can open up a more nuanced view of the interplay of spirit and nature than leaping to theories of our own.
    The peace of God on all who read these blogs who may feel under the cosh of desperate feelings. “For the LORD your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory.” (Deut 20:4)

  8. Good post and discussion. Thanks.
    I first became interested in casting out demons when I realised that Jesus told his disciples to do it, and that future disciples were to do everything he had commanded to the twelve (Mat 28:20). However, I did not want to risk damaging someone else by my ignorant approach, so I didn’t know how to get started. At that time I came across the book by Graham and Shirley Powell, Christian Set Yourself Free. This was his story about setting himself free by claiming appropriate promises from the Bible, such as “My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit” so get off me you horrible fear!

    I was pleased with this. I could practice on myself and nobody else would be harmed. I have since explained this approach to others so they could try it for themselves, and given away perhaps a dozen copies of the book.

    I later wrote an article for beginners which is at http://www.pennantpublishing.co.uk/castout.pdf if you care to look. I am happy for it to be dissected on this blog if you wish so that we can all learn.

  9. Does God heal today?

    Many of us have been working on the assumption that He does, partly because we’ve seen stuff with our own eyes, and partly because of the shared beliefs of the communities where we’ve worshipped.

    Deliverance ministry is towards the sharp end of the “prayer ministry” wedge. At the other end are simple prayers for simple things like “please make my headache better, Lord”.

    Many churches will offer prayers somewhere along this wedge or spectrum, depending on their ambition, beliefs and attitude to risk.

    “Ambition” sounds a bit performance -oriented. But make no mistake, there is a strong need for results, for growth, for numbers, in defence of a real fear of decline.

    “Beliefs” about the way God routinely works are sincerely held. I would echo the thoughts above about highly educated and intelligent people holding such views. Indeed valued and respected friends do so too.

    “Attitude to risk” is a bit more unconscious. I remember someone leading “ministry time”, saying: ‘this is a safe place’. I realised there and then that it wasn’t. It was no such thing. Offering all sorts of things to vulnerable people with no realistic way of knowing whether or not you/God will deliver them, is reckless at best. It can be positively harmful. Risk needs to be tackled; safety; boundaries too, if we are to be responsible communities.

    The medical mantra is ‘primum non nocere’ which means: ‘first of all, do no harm’. As Christians are we sure we’re not being harmful?

  10. Graham and Shirley Powell wrote a book Christian Set Yourself Free which I commend. I found it helpful in explaining the subject, and also I was able to put it into practice in my own life before attempting to help others, reducing the danger of causing problems. The tools for the job are verses in Scripture such as The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin and My body is the temple of the holy spirit. Apply vigorously!

    1. I think my earlier post may have been lost in the ether but may I recommend any works by a fellow Scot and fine Christian thinker, Montague Barker (or Monty as he was known). He worked as a clinical psychiatrist in Bristol for many years and with a colleague investigated numbers of people who claimed to be possessed by demons. A brief paper on the subject can be seen here – https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a1e1/7cd931da4bfd79c90223a092b8f253c45b79.pdf
      Monty died three years ago but a fine obituary of him was written in the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and can be seen here – https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/obituary/montagu-gordon-barker

      1. Sorry this had to be posted twice. The software sometimes demands that I moderate particular contributions. I have no idea why. This time I was travelling back from London so could not do it immediately.

      2. Thank you for that link, Leslie, it’s a very helpful article.

        I agree with Barker that we don’t see in the New Testament any precedent for identifying certain symptoms of possession or need for deliverance ministry. Nor can I think of any case where Christians are spoken of as needing deliverance ministry. I think the whole area has been vastly over-emphasised, and is best left alone.

        I have found Scott Peck’s book ‘People of the LIe’ very helpful. He writes, as a psychiatrist, about evil in human personality. He says that although there are people who are evil, possession of people by evil spirits is exceptionally rare. We have a choice about how much we give space to the propensity for evil we all have. I too have known people who are evil, but I’m not convinced I’ve ever met anyone who needed deliverance ministry.

  11. I recall Monty Barker teaching us at Trinity College Bristol in around 1983. “It’s the first world war. Imagine you are in the trench with your gun, and you are banging away at the enemy in the trench opposite you, when a second gun opens up from the left towards you. You can just about cope with that, firing some rounds at one gun and some at the other, but then a third gun opens up towards you from the right. It’s too much, so you get your head down. That’s depression!”
    I have remembered that and quoted it to others many times. So helpful.
    On the subject of gentle deliverance as discussed above, I compare deliverence to gardening. No garden is weed free. Many weeds come out with a gentle tug, but some like Japanese Knot Weed will require serious earth-moving equipment if you let them get entrenched. Our bindweed took twenty years to go because I did not know the best way of going about it and it lived underground out of sight except for its annual uprising. The inference of all this is obvious for our subject.
    I also find passages in the Old Testament illuminating (see Paul’s comment in 1 Cor 10:11). See e.g. Psalm 18, a great Psalm of deliverance, and 40 and 54. I love Jesus’ comment “if by the finger of God I cast out demons…”, seeing this as a reference to the magicians of Egypt who could not match the miracles of Moses and said “this is the finger of God…” (Luke 11:20, Exodus 8:19). In other words, the Exodus from Egypt is a picture of deliverance. It has been pointed out that getting the people out of Egypt was one thing, but getting Egypt out of the people was quite another!

    1. Deliverance in Exodus is deliverance from slavery. In Psalms 18 and 54 deliverance is from enemies and danger; Psalm 40 speaks of deliverance from enemies and also from sin and despair. In 1 Cor. 10 Paul is referring both to the Exodus – the Jewish people’s deliverance from slavery – and to the danger of sinning as many of them had.

      On the contrary, ‘deliverance ministry’ nowadays means deliverance from the influence of evil spirits which are thought to control the behaviour of practicing Christians. But in the Bible sin is spoken of as a choice or a weakness, not as the result of demons having a hold over believers. The illustration you give of being under fire from three sides at once helpfully depicts the result of too much pressure and stress – it gets us down. But this is a natural response, not a demonic one.

      I can’t see any justification in the New Testament for thinking that practicing Christians can be controlled or influenced by evil spirits. New Christians were expected to renounce sinful practices and any involvement in pagan worship or occult practices. There is some evidence that a kind of exorcism was routinely performed at baptism – a practice which is recalled in the Anglican baptism liturgy. No ‘deliverance’ seems to have been needed or carried out after that.

      I know most of the people practicing deliverance ministry have good motives and are doing what they genuinely think best for the person being prayed for. However, I’ve come to believe that the theology is dubious, and the practice unlikely to be helpful. Sadly, in too many cases it actually proves harmful.

  12. Thank you for relating the appalling experience you had, which lays bare a whole range of failure in both pastoral practice and care. It’s hard to imagine a more effective way to retraumatise a vulnerable person.

    I also was at one time involved in this kind of ‘deliverance ministry’ in the charismatic church, both as a receiver and practitioner, and both pre- and post-Wimber.

    In my opinion, many of the problem lie in the interplay of a developing practice of charismatic ministry, undergirded by an unexamined conservative evangelical theology. I think those who practice such a charismatic ministry can be quite skilled pastorally, and certainly would instinctively avoid some of the appalling mistakes such as you experienced, but function in an entirely inadequate theological framework. Or perhaps it would be better to say a framework that does not acknowledge there are things that we simply do not understand, and at this point cannot adequately frame ‘deliverance ministry’ theologically.

    You say above that ‘…deliverance ministry nowadays means deliverance from the influence of evil spirits.’ I think this is what the underlying theology would say, but is what exactly do those who practice such ministry think that they are doing? What do people, for example think they doing when they pray ‘we ask you to lift this oppression?’ or something similar. My suspicion is that most people just go with their pastoral instincts, hopefully held in a good safeguarding environment, but don’t really think theologically about what they are doing, because it is so difficult to fit the biblical material to our current environment.

    I feel like I’m not making as much sense as I would like to here, but that is perhaps also symptomatic of the problem! I think some genuinely creative theologically-informed thinking about this topic is sorely needed.

    1. Thank you John. I suspect you are right that some people pray the prayers without being at all sure what they mean by them. Nevertheless, locating the problem as b sign some force outside ourselves does negate our own responsibility, and I don’t think that’s helpful.

      It’s a while since I did much reading on the theology of of evil spirits – if we can call it that – though I have done some research on current practice. The most creative theological work I know of is Walter Wink’s on ‘The Powers’. It was initially issued as 3 volumes but there is a later 1-volume summary. I remember thinking it was very good but that was some years ago -I really need to re-read it.

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