Former pastor, congregants face child-sex and satanic accusations

From the New York times via the Houston Chronicle:

But by two years ago, when the church finally closed after a ferocious falling-out between the late pastor's son and successor, Louis Lamonica Jr., and his family, the congregation that once neared 1,000 had dwindled to 10 or 15 troubled souls from a handful of families.

And now, many of them, including the former pastor and a deputy sheriff who once lived on the church grounds, are behind bars, accused by the police of a litany of ungodly offenses, including sexual abuse of perhaps two dozen children and the mutilations of cats for satanic rituals.

Eddie Robinson, assistant pastor at the 5,000-member Harvest World Outreach Ministries in nearby Hammond — to which many Hosanna members migrated — says what happened is clear. He told congregants Sunday that a prophecy of "witchcraft" problems had been revealed to the church leadership in recent weeks.

Click here for the rest.

My general opinion is that there really aren't any Satanists at all: the few people I've met who claim to have dabbled in Satanism were, without exception, disaffected and socially inept teenagers who listen to heavy metal. Who in their right mind would worship Satan? I mean, whether you believe in Lucifer or not, he is Western civilization's most identifiable icon for evil. Usually, people who really are evil, even Hitler, fool themselves into thinking that what they do is somehow good. Nobody worships Satan. Remember all those Satanic ritual child abuse cases in day care centers from the 1980s that were freaking people out? They all turned out to be bullshit. Satanism is a big joke.

But the case mentioned above is interesting. This is a fundamentalist church, and these people not only believe in the Dark One's existence, they belive he is a living presence on Earth, struggling with God's angels in order to gain the upper hand in influencing our individual choices and behavior. If anybody in Western culture has the potential to become a Satanist for real, it is a fundamentalist, because fundamentalists already have a world view that makes such an absurd concept possible.

I'm very curious as to how this turns out. These are probably false allegations, readily believed by small town hysterical religious nuts. But I could be wrong. If I am, I have to wonder. Could the emotionally driven, supernaturally irrational ranks of Christian fundamentalism become spawing vats for some new weird Satanic movement? Ten years ago, I would have never entertained such a notion, but things are pretty weird these days. Anything could happen.

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