The idea of spirit possession is dangerous, I admit; but then religion is dangerous, and always has been. Dangerous to the individual because he or she may go barmy; dangerous to society, because rival protagonists may resort to war. Consider the calculating cynicism of Cardinal Richelieu in championing the Protestant cause in Germany in the Thirty Years War, which he did for the benefit of France in the world of power politics. Fortunately it benefited us too; because if Protestantism had been extinguished on the continent, our turn in Britain would have come next. And with it, the ability to read the scriptures in the vernacular, and in the light of one’s own intelligence, would have been extinguished; and the Inquisition and Wallenstein’s troops who plundered catholic and protestant alike, between them, would have reduced Europe to the black night of the soul. Of course a religious sect, like any other dangerous animal, when attacked has to defend itself. Persecution, if sufficiently ruthless, almost always works. The persecution of the Albigentses for being Arians, that is for thinking Jesus slightly inferior to the Father, by Pope Innocent III was successful, because they were all exterminated. It was the first genocide of a fellow Christian people; and a singular departure from the meek gospel of Christ. Today Christianity is being persecuted by the intolerant secularism that is stalking across Europe, by the denial of jobs, the withholding of funds and local authority grants for projects, and a partial prohibition on evangelising. Of course religion is dangerous; and the cushy time the C.of E. clergy have had the last few hundred years is likely to be at an end. Today, no-one respects sanctuary, in the way Alaric the Goth did in his sack of Rome in Augustine’s time; but then he was a Christian gentleman, and nowadays both terms are despised.
I would not have thought that the idea of spirit possession was any more dangerous than fervent traditional belief. Maybe more dangerous than traditional C.of E. church-going, but then nowadays that has tended to become a supine mimicking of political correctness. Until recently the C.of E. with its timeless ceremonies and sublime Liturgy gave support and authority to the living traditions that made England what it is, or at least was. But nowadays to say, “We don’t behave like that here” is “Racist”! Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who was no great intellectual, was able to say, “I prefer the many English robbers, to the many French thieves”; but now even that would be “Racist”. And I think the effect of political correctness is to destroy the living traditions of a society, so that it becomes ashamed of itself, at least in bourgeois circles where fashion is god. It does this in the name of a “Just society”; but actually it destroys all society, which depends on honest dealing between man and man. And a prescribed code of behaviour is no substitute. This was one of the things Jesus railed against most vehemently, the replacement of spontaneous behaviour by the incredible complexity of the Jewish interpretation of the Mosaic Law. He said that unless a man’s righteousness exceeded the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees they would not get into his heaven. So we have seen it all before; and there is always a battle between legal conformity and the freedom of the spirit. And there always will be. The trouble with the C.of E. is that its clergy absolutely refuse to teach men and women to be good citizens, because Jesus had no time for secular society; his was a gospel of personal salvation, in contrast to the Old Testament where the claims of society were more in evidence. They should remember that St. Paul preached that to live by the Spirit was life, whereas to live by the Law was death. But they seem unwilling or unable to adapt what St.Paul was saying to modern society, or modern thought. But Nature abhors a vacuum; so something must take the place of the old traditions, and probably is doing so already. There is a self-confidence abroad, which may be unwarranted by any corresponding experience; but which may be present even in the thug’s vicious response to the slightest rebuke.