The Politics of Demons

This story from NPR is pretty unsettling. The part that I find most troubling:

"They teach quite literally that these 'mountains' have fallen under the control of demonic influences in society," says Tabachnick. "And therefore, they must reclaim them for God in order to bring about the kingdom of God on Earth. ... The apostles teach what's called 'strategic level spiritual warfare' [because they believe that the] reason why there is sin and corruption and poverty on the Earth is because the Earth is controlled by a hierarchy of demons under the authority of Satan. So they teach not just evangelizing souls one by one, as we're accustomed to hearing about. They teach that they will go into a geographic region or a people group and conduct spiritual-warfare activities in order to remove the demons from the entire population. This is what they're doing that's quite fundamentally different than other evangelical groups."

Demons. It's kind of hard to argue with someone that they are mistaken or denying people their rights, when they think they are arguing with Satan's minions, isn't it? That kind of demon rhetoric is already being used by some of our elected officials. And it really doesn't seem to be being used as figurative speech.

Wow. Demons.