Even the Miraculous Needs a Press Agent

The sort of picture I'd remember
if you had seen it.

Rod Dreher today linked to a piece by Julie Lyons on a pair of Texas exorcists. These aren't the first exorcisms Ms. Lyons has seen, having also attended exorcisms "while on Christian church missions in Nigeria and Botswana."She says of Ruth, the Pollard's client in Texas that,

Either she is an Academy Award-winning horror-film actress, with Ferrari-smooth shifts of body and voice, or she is encountering something in a subconscious realm. At one point, she speaks the name of a demon in a distinctly foreign voice: “Ba-al.” Later, in casual conversation, the pronunciation comes out differently: “Bail,” with a bit of a twang—the name of a Canaanite god mentioned numerous times in the Bible.

And of her earlier experiences, she says,

Through travels with church groups to Nigeria and Botswana, I’ve also seen phenomena I cannot attribute to natural means. I watched a boy of 10 or so who fell to the floor and began speaking in a guttural, grown man’s voice. Although I was among ordinary Nigerians who converse in broken, heavily accented English, the boy orated with precise British diction. At another time in the same place, a woman rolled and flailed with such force that she sent plastic chairs scattering.

There is possibly a huge gulf between phenomena that Ms. Lyon cannot attribute to natural means and phenomena that cannot be attributed to natural means. I don't suppose Ms. Lyon has video of the boy speaking "with precise British diction."

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