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Deadly exorcism
Over the weekend, two children were murdered and their siblings injured in, police believe, an attempted exorcism. Their mother, Zakieya Avery, and Monifa Standford, a woman who lived with the family, stabbed the children multiple times.
Avery, described by her step-grandmother as “humble and meek”, and known to have struggled with mental health before now, spoke often of her love for God and fear of Satan.
According to the commander of the county’s major crimes unit, Captain Jones, “The devil was the enemy in their (the two women’s) eyes.”
Serpent handling
In 2012, Mark Wolford, a West Virginia pastor, died after a rattlesnake bit him during a Pentecostal “snake-handling ritual”.
This ritual, based on Bible verses such as Mark 16:18 “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not harm them,” involves believers displaying their faith by handling deadly snakes.
Wolford, who saw his own father die exactly the same way years before, did not believe “serpent -handlers” cannot get bitten, merely that serpent-handling was part of a Christian “living his beliefs and being obedient.”
A friend, Ralph Hood, claimed “this is how he would have wanted to die”.
Unsanitary circumcision
Last year, New York’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community’s practice of ritual circumcision came under fire, not for the first time, when two infants who had undergone the ritual were found to be infected with herpes.
This ritual, dangerous mostly because it involves the practitioner orally sucking blood from the wound in order to “cleanse” it, has been linked to 13 cases of herpes infections since 2000.
Two of those cases resulted in deaths, and two others in brain damage.
Eating grass
South African pastor Lesego Daniel has been in the news recently for convincing his followers to eat grass to “be closer to God”.
While some members of his congregation claim that eating grass has wonderful effects, from curing a sore throat to restoring the ability to walk, photo evidence has mostly depicted people getting sick.
A comment from one of his supporters, Rosemary Phetha, may hint to the “logic” behind this instruction. She claimed he “turned me into a sheep and instructed me to eat grass.”
The Bible often refers to believing Christians as “sheep”, though it’s noted in Jeremiah 50:6 that “My (God’s) people have been lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray.”
Satanic hysteria
In the 1980s, a wave of moral panic terrified of satanic ritual abuse swept across the world.
Harrowing stories surfaced of a cult in which children were sexually abused and babies were eaten, all for the glory of Satan.
Over twenty years later, while pseudo-Satanism might exist and the sexual abuse of children is always a very real problem, we now know that no solid evidence supports claims of wide-spread, organized, cannibalistic Satanic cults.
The whole thing was a great, big, scary conspiracy theory, but it did ruin lives. Dan and Fran Keller, for example, have only just been released from a 21 year prison sentence, after the doctor responsible for the only physical evidence against them recanted his testimony, claiming he had made a mistake.
Follow Women24 on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
Over the weekend, two children were murdered and their siblings injured in, police believe, an attempted exorcism. Their mother, Zakieya Avery, and Monifa Standford, a woman who lived with the family, stabbed the children multiple times.
Avery, described by her step-grandmother as “humble and meek”, and known to have struggled with mental health before now, spoke often of her love for God and fear of Satan.
According to the commander of the county’s major crimes unit, Captain Jones, “The devil was the enemy in their (the two women’s) eyes.”
Serpent handling
In 2012, Mark Wolford, a West Virginia pastor, died after a rattlesnake bit him during a Pentecostal “snake-handling ritual”.
This ritual, based on Bible verses such as Mark 16:18 “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not harm them,” involves believers displaying their faith by handling deadly snakes.
Wolford, who saw his own father die exactly the same way years before, did not believe “serpent -handlers” cannot get bitten, merely that serpent-handling was part of a Christian “living his beliefs and being obedient.”
A friend, Ralph Hood, claimed “this is how he would have wanted to die”.
Unsanitary circumcision
Last year, New York’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community’s practice of ritual circumcision came under fire, not for the first time, when two infants who had undergone the ritual were found to be infected with herpes.
This ritual, dangerous mostly because it involves the practitioner orally sucking blood from the wound in order to “cleanse” it, has been linked to 13 cases of herpes infections since 2000.
Two of those cases resulted in deaths, and two others in brain damage.
Eating grass
South African pastor Lesego Daniel has been in the news recently for convincing his followers to eat grass to “be closer to God”.
While some members of his congregation claim that eating grass has wonderful effects, from curing a sore throat to restoring the ability to walk, photo evidence has mostly depicted people getting sick.
A comment from one of his supporters, Rosemary Phetha, may hint to the “logic” behind this instruction. She claimed he “turned me into a sheep and instructed me to eat grass.”
The Bible often refers to believing Christians as “sheep”, though it’s noted in Jeremiah 50:6 that “My (God’s) people have been lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray.”
Satanic hysteria
In the 1980s, a wave of moral panic terrified of satanic ritual abuse swept across the world.
Harrowing stories surfaced of a cult in which children were sexually abused and babies were eaten, all for the glory of Satan.
Over twenty years later, while pseudo-Satanism might exist and the sexual abuse of children is always a very real problem, we now know that no solid evidence supports claims of wide-spread, organized, cannibalistic Satanic cults.
The whole thing was a great, big, scary conspiracy theory, but it did ruin lives. Dan and Fran Keller, for example, have only just been released from a 21 year prison sentence, after the doctor responsible for the only physical evidence against them recanted his testimony, claiming he had made a mistake.
Follow Women24 on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
