The Satanic Panic, asylum-seeking Iranian Christians, and Usha Vance on her Hindu faith

Religion links for 7.1.25

I’ll be taking July 4 off from The Religiverse. Have a great week and holiday weekend. ~ Jason

Katori Shrine, a prominent Shinto shrine in Katori City, Japan. It’s one of the oldest and most important Shinto shrines in the nation, believed to have been founded in the 7th century B.C. [Wikimedia Commons]

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Top Story: The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

A few weeks ago, my sister asked me if I had listened yet to Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, a relatively new limited-series podcast from Mike Cosper at Christianity Today. I had listened to Cosper’s The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill a couple of years ago—which was equally infuriating and fascinating—and so I dug into the new one.

It’s about the so-called Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s. That cultural moment was very familiar to me because I lived it, growing up in a very conservative Southern Baptist church.

The podcast explores the period of moral panic over alleged occult abuse, which captivated American evangelical circles. I was in high school from 1988 to 1992—a faithful youth group kid—right at the height of this focus.

In fact, I saw the evangelist and comedian Mike Warnke perform live at my church, talking about his days as a high-ranking Satanist priest. (Most of his claims ended up being debunked and he was widely discredited within the Christian community.) I heard police officers warn about ritual Satanic abuse in the drainage systems and tunnels underneath my hometown of Amarillo, Texas, in the middle of the Bible Belt. I learned to be suspicious of friends who played Dungeons and Dragons or who listened to bands like Megadeath and Slayer.

Cosper’s podcast shows how the fear and sensationalism of this period—amplified by church leaders and popular media—led to real harm. There were false accusations, ruined reputations, and epically misdirected evangelical energy.

But what really captured my attention in the show was how, in later episodes, the series drew a direct line between Satanic conspiracy theories and the rise of the Religious Right—which also has a penchant for conspiracies. Moral fear and spiritual warfare rhetoric served to mobilize voters throughout Trump’s first term and culminated in the January 6 breaching of the U.S. Capitol.