I used to be pretty good about keeping up with various movements, trends and fads in Protestant churches. No surprise there: I haunted the run of the mill Christian book stores, had my own clergy meetings among the Methodists and church members were always bringing me all sorts of tidbits. Nowadays, though, I seem to be on the far side of the curve when it comes to such things. In fact, I am so far behind that this morning, in reading recent appellate court opinions, I was educated by none other than the North Carolina Court of Appeals about something called blasting prayers.
Now I’m sure all of my readers probably know about this, and will sigh and shake their collective head at my ignorance, but — in case you too are ignorant — let me educate you. Or more aptly, let the trial court, who was quoted by the Honorables as follows:
This Court finds that blasting is a high pitched, shrill, piercing, non-verbal scream. The purpose of blasting was described by witnesses for both the Plaintiff and Defendant as for use in driving out devils. Children are said by WOFF authority figures, staff and school personnel to be “given to the control of devils†which necessitates blasting.
Blasting has been and is used on children from birth and will occur from within 1 foot of a child. Frequently, more than one person engages in blasting at one time. Children are blasted repeatedly for hours. Children and adults are sometimes physically restrained while being subjected to blasting.
WOFF refers to Word of Faith Fellowship, which was the church in the spotlight in this custody case, an unpublished opinion in the case of McGee v. McGee, handed down on August 1 of this year. Apparently the trial court got to view videos of the practice which showed what the court described as accompanying gestures. I’m sure that was delightful.
In any event, when the parties divorced the court granted them joint custody of the kids, but specifically would not allow the children to participate in the prayers. While they both had attended WOFF at one time, Dad apparently left the group before the divorce. Mom, however, remained an active member and subscribed to their views, and it appears that even after the entry of the judgment she continued taking the children. It ended up back in court, partly on contempt issues, and also on Mom’s motion to modify the prior order to allow the kids to bask in the noisy love, so to speak. The Court of Appeals sent it back to the trial court for further consideration, but the legal aspects are not really the point.
Which is: what precisely is the point of this? The whole thing vaguely reminds me of the last fad I became aware of, which was running in church. That apparently involved Spirit-led sprints around the sanctuary or up or down the aisles, depending on how the Spirit felt that day. It actually sounds more like an ADHD problem, but that is just me.
Obviously, however, this is a practice of an entirely different dimension than sacred sprinting. Is this yet another example of corruption of scripture by the Orthodox? Does Matthew 17:21, in its pure and pristine rendering in the original KJV Bible, say that the demon in the child could be vanquished only by prayer, fasting and blasting?
This is a question I would be interested to know the answer to. Is there really scripture for this? If only we knew! Imagine the sight and sound: Jesus and His disciples gather in a circle around the little children, and shriek, for the salvation of little souls. While Peter holds and restrains them. In the mind, one sees the picture as a sacred and edifying event.
Or not. Your choice.
Additional information: Some hours after this post was put up, I received an e-mail from an anonymous reader, who provided some more information that should be passed on. First, the Dad in the lawsuit left WOFF quite some time ago, apparently before the marriage ended. I may not have been sufficiently clear in pointing out that it was the Dad who was trying to keep the children from being involved in what was happening at WOFF.
Second, it appears that this ritual is not the norm for Word of Faith churches. It has been denounced as cultic by some investigators. A page with a number of resources about the group may be found at this awareness page. My thanks to this reader for providing this link.
As Barnabas suggested in comments, this should be a matter of prayer for all of us.
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Don’t feel bad, I had never heard of this before either. Silly and goofy… but these same people think Catholics and Orthodox are weird because we venerate the saints.
At least we don’t shriek at each other (not normally, lol).
That’s creepy–and I’m still Protestant, and at a mildly Charismatic church, so I’m a lot closer to it than you are. I still think that it’s creepy. A lot of those WOF churches are just nicely-dressed cults.
I believe blasting has been practiced by certain kind of parents for centuries.
Seriously though, this is very odd.
whoops, i pingbacked the wrong article. all is corrected.
As a former Pentecostal (now Orthodox) I remember services where a man would “walk the backs of the benches.” He would literally jump up on the back of the front pew and jump from pew to pew until he came to the rear pew.
We would also “rebuke the devil” in very loud voices to drive out the evil one.
One of the draws to Orthodoxy for me was becoming exhausted with these hystrionics, especially since all the noise and bluster really didn’t change my life.
Blasting prayers is simply a re-worked Pentecostal exorcism.
I grieve over the souls of those trapped in such a place. May God grant us the wisdom to learn to offer the faith to those seeking persons.
I’ve never heard of this before. You’re not alone. But what is a “non-verbal scream”? That doesn’t make any sense? And who wants to be yelled at anyway? With the way I’m made, I’d probably start giggling and bust out laughing if someone was shrieking at me!
So, the question becomes, do we act as citizens to protect religious practices we believe to be unhealthy on the premise that our practices may be next? How far is it (for a secularist) from barring irrational screams to barring prostrations or fasting based on supposed health concerns?
In any case, I concur with Barnabas: Grief is certainly called for, as is prayer.
Barnabas’s post about pentecostal pew-jumping, reminded me of my not-to-distant past. Having been in a pentecostal, turned WOF church, and later vineyard-third wave-deliverance church, I’ve seen it all (except for snake-handling, which was where I drew the line).
I would have to say the most extreme display I’ve ever seen was what we called “pentecostal helicopters.” (even the pentecostals thought they were wierd). You could actually tell a helicopter without ever seeing them fly. It was always women with hair piled high in a bun. That’s because cutting your hair is a sin unto death in some pentecostal groups. Slowly they would get revved up. As the music escalated, so did they, until finally in a fevered pitch, they’d take off, hands straight out to the side. They would start going in circles - with their eyes closed, mind you - until they had gone from one end of the church to the other (or all of their hair had fallen out of its bun, whichever came first). God help you if you happened to be in their path; one could easily end up with a whiplash - or worse!
I left that church when we moved to another town and started going to a cult - I mean church - where we were hooked - I mean members - for 13 years. All of my friends from that church think my conversion is really pretty wierd. In fact, they consider their church so normal that the only reason they can think of why people leave is that there is a demon in the form of a moray eel that drives people away from their church.
I am a newly illumined Orthodox Christian, and must say in all sincerity - just being out of that environment has brought healing!
Yeesh, you guys are scaring me!
For the lawyers among us, pray tell: Did the trial court let the mom take the kids to church? We respectully request that you flesh out more of the procedural history, and grant such other and further relief to which we may show ourselves justly entitled to receive.
Do you mean in the order the Court of Appeals was dealing with, Tidbit? The trial court had said that it was OK for two older children to participate in the prayers, but that a third, younger child could not. Apparently all three children testified, made a favorable impression on the court and said that they wanted to be allowed to participate. The trial court said that the younger was not ready to make that decision. The Court of Appeals jumped on that, and said if it was harmful for the younger child than it was harmful for the older two, and vice versa. My impression is that when it gets back to the trial court there may be a supplemental hearing on possible harm, although I suppose the trial court could go back and simply make a decision on the existing record.
Surprisingly — to me anyway — there was a psychological evaluation of the children done and introduced into evidence, which showed them to be well adjusted and free from harm. No offense intended, and of course I don’t know the children or anyone associated with the case, but that conclusion surprised me. On the resource page that was sent to me there appeared to be numerous stories of harm. From a professonal viewpoint, if nothing else, it would be interesting to examine that report and look for weaknesses, if there are any. I have seen a lot of psych evals, and most of them are very critical of unusual situations kids might be put in. So professionally the thing is intriguing, to say nothing of the theological problems.
Another interesting aspect, although outside of this case, is that there appears to have been an ongoing war between WOFF and the local Dept. of Social Services, culminating in a lawsuit in federal court against the agency filed by the church. It appears that the whole situation has the community in something of an uproar.
The whole thing exerts a kind of dreadful atttraction, in the same way that you cannot resist looking at a car wreck when you pass it. It is interesting on one level, but I am grateful it is not in my community.
Thanks for the additional information, Seraphim. I handle a fair amount of child protective services cases. I don’t have much use for psychological evaluations, as I find them extremely subjective and prone to the biases of the psychologist. As with any expert witness, a smart lawyer knows which psychologist will say what he wants them to say; that is, make a favorable evaluation based upon the particular facts of the case.
There is a book called “Twisted Scriptures,” which greatly helped me to understand the level of mind-control/psychological manipulation I had been subjected to for a number of years in the group we were part of.
It is understandable that the children would come across as “well-adjusted.” According to this author, people will look you right in the eye and say they are not being controlled or abused, and will be highly protective of the group they are involved in. It is ordinarily because of some sort of an emotional payoff on the side, almost always involving the use of fear and/or guilt to get people to say and do the “right thing.” At one time, we would have looked you straight in the eye and said, “We are not being controlled. We make our own choices,” when in truth we were making the choices the leadership thought was right for our family; choices, I might add, we would never have made had we been thinking for ourselves.