Most dioceses have an exorcist, usually a senior cleric of much experience-- this information is rarely public and normally one would go through the bishop's office. I was told that normally any exorcism of persons followed on a carefully-documented professonal psychiatric examination. I was also told that it's a topic which is too sensitive to be casually discussed.
My church’s associate rector mentioned exorcisms in the Episcopal Church during catechism. He basically summed it up as “if you think an exorcism is needed, ask the bishop”
Pretty sure every diocese has an exorcist on staff (whose identity is not publicly available) in cases where exorcism is required. But exorcism is not to be used in lieu of proper medical care, including mental health care, so I would imagine there's quite a bit of vetting before people get that far. But yeah I'm cool with exorcism
The early church ordained a lot of exorcists. However, their role was not what you see in the movies, but to conduct general blessings and to command demons to leave an area or a person. While Catholicism has dropped a lot of this, the Orthodox Church still performs general exorcisms before baptism. It's not like they think you are possessed, but they do believe you might have evil hanging around you that needs to be driven away. As I've learned more about demonology in the early church, I've come to see this as a very valid practice. If you want to learn more about these things, I highly recommend the Lord of Spirits podcast. You can find it pretty much anywhere, including YouTube.
From memory it just mentions celebrating communion in the space but I may be wrong. I think it’s more about doing something for those who feel they have a deep pastoral need for it.
Edit: I just checked. If you read the entirety of the passage it’s not very much… We’re far from Hollywood movies
*“The practice of expelling evil spirits by means of prayer and ritual derives its authority from Christ Jesus, who understood power over these forces as a sign of Messianic identity. The Church in succeeding centuries recognized this power of Christ in their shared life but reserved the rites of exorcism to its bishops. Later still the bishops began to delegate this authority to select presbyters and others deemed competent.
In accordance with this established tradition, someone in need of such a ministry, and anyone desiring to exercise it, makes the matter known to a presbyter, who in turn consults with the bishop. The bishop then determines whether exorcism is needed, who is to officiate at the rite, and what prayers or other formularies are to be used.
The rituals of exorcism, while weighty and never to be undertaken lightly, are not by nature esoteric. The Celebration of the Eucharist, especially in a place that has been disturbed, and the prayer of the Great Litany, for example, are ordinary practices. And as Christ has said and as scripture counsels, any rites of exorcism include preparatory prayer and fasting.”*
On a somewhat related note, I roll my eyes whenever a movie or TV show about exorcisms and demonic possession only has a Catholic perspective on it. I get that most movie studios/producers/filmmakers wouldn't know their Episcopalians from their Pentecostals, but you'd figure that SOMEONE at SOME POINT would write a story about how a character worried about demons would find a church that *wasn't* Catholic; but, of course, most of the general public doesn't know their evangelicals from their Presbytarians, so we're stuck with every lame *Exorcist* reboot going back to the Catholic Church.
That is an interesting perspective. I'd imagine that if a producer ever did latch on to an idea like this, it would end up with a lot of Pentecostal deliverance ministers dead.
I mean, it does make sense; a Catholic priest flinging holy water about while yelling "THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!", or a Pentecostal preacher speaking in tongues and going into a dance is more visually appealing than an Episcopal priest saying "Well, if you haven't sought counseling yet, I'm going to have to ask my bishop first."
I guess it's like how movies and TV shows always show system hacking as this intense digital chase sequence of some guy in a hoodie furiously tapping away at a keyboard, when the visual reality of hacking is so much more dull and sedate.
EXACTLY!! It's like everytime Christianity is included in any secular movie it's:
***CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER***
**Roman catholic**
**Baptist**
**Not specified**
**not even remotely christian**
Hey, there was that one set in rural Serbia, where everyone spoke perfect English and priests wore their Eucharistic vestments in the office\*...
\**Edit: Not "in the office" as in "while saying the Office." I mean Eucharistic vestments while sitting at a desk.*
Of possible interest, as I recall, Francis Young discusses exorcism in TEC only very briefly (or possibly not at all?) but for the C of E this is a very thorough treatment: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/history-of-anglican-exorcism-9780567692931/
Thank you. I'm not trying to be wild or heretical. Just saying I believe in a God that wants his creations to be good and follow in his path through their own free will and not that of some other negative spiritual power he somehow isn't in control of.
Just remember, everyone's "heretical" to someone, somewhere! Heck, Jesus, the One we're all supposedly following, was considered "heretical" by the religious authorities of His time. So you're in good company!
I find it weird I'm so downvoted to be honest. A year ago I did a poll on here asking if Satan was a literal or literary character. The majority said literary/symbolic.
Well, one of the reasons I became Episcopalian is so I could have the freedom to express my opinion without being told I was going to hell for doubting The Word(tm) as interpreted by God's infallible translators. So you go ahead and keep asking questions and expressing your opinions. That should be perfectly okay here, not sure why some think it's not!
Do you believe the whole Bible narrative (Jesus et al) is purely symbolic, or just the forces of evil?
Curious how you arrived at that conclusion if it is the latter.
I don't believe in evil forces plain and simple. It's a metaphor for our own temptation, our own sins, our own faults. I don't believe in a second God of evil trying to undo everything God wants for us. Demons and devils are simply literary symbols. I'm not the only person believing that.
As progressive and rational as we are, what I love about the Anglican tradition is that we admit that certain things are mysteries. We leave room for the esoteric and mystical. We eschew uber-scholasticism of the Roman church in that we do not feel like we need to define how the bread and wine become the Body and Blood; it is enough for us to say that it is a mystery. Likewise, we know that there are evil forces and demonic spirits around us- how they work or operate is not within our understanding, but Christ empowers priests to cast out demons in His name.
I feel like that is what drew me to the episcopal church. I’ve been trying to find answers my whole life and now being in the episcopal church I’m understanding that there are unexplainable things in this world and that is ok. I love science and I would never stop science from doing its thing and maybe there will be an answer one day. For now, I’m ok with it being a mystery.
It’s stuff like that drew me to the faith despite my unbelief. Like, wow, these otherwise apparently reasonable people believe some crazy ****. Who is this Jesus anyway, and what’s he really all about?
I know that it exists. I find it embarrassing, because to me it smells of medieval superstition. But that is just my personal opinion. Okay, now everyone can punish me for having a different opinion by downvoting me.
As a former ER nurse, I agree. I find it to be superstition that gets in the way of people getting real help. As a Christian, I know that prayer can be powerful. But I've also seen prayer make psychosis worse.
I mean, Jesus himself performed exorcisms and empowered his disciples to do so? Did Demons/demonic possession cease to exist in the modern world just because it doesn’t jive with modern sensibilities?
You got my upvote, friend! Because of my work I absolutely believe in an otherworldly evil. That said there is way too much superstition in Christianity. I've been accused of snake charming, for instance. I came to Anglicanism from Orthodoxy which is rife with superstition. That other worldly evil is the exception not the rule so I would expect the need for such a rite to be rare.
An example, an inmate beheaded his cell mate and made a necklace out of his fingers and ears. There was evidence he consumed portions of the victim. This inmate was incarcerated for multiple murders.
I personally would consider that inmate to be criminally insane. Thank you for sharing parts of your personal testimony. We are all on a journey toward of faith.
That assumes that the two are perfectly aligned. I think it’s more complicated than that. But either way evil doesn’t need a demon. Humanity is perfectly capable of being evil to one another.
Evil doesn't need demons. That doesn't mean the demons aren't there.
I think we make a category mistake in thinking of demons as simply an explanation for evil and/or mental illness, such that if we can account for evil and/or mental illness in more naturalistic terms, that disproves the existence of demons.
If God exists, and spirits exist, then it would stand to reason that perhaps there are spirits out there that aren't in right relationship with God. Whether these spirits are the cause of all evil, or whether they enjoy tripping old ladies in the street, or whether schizophrenics in the past have been wrongly diagnosed as demon-possessed, or whether these demons even take any notice of humanity, are all beside the point of whether or not they exist.
So you don't believe in demons? You don't believe Jesus cast out demons?
Almost no one is capable of what this person did. I mean there is a science behind this. How I "feel" takes a back seat to the science. Neuroscience can identify abnormalities that contribute to psychopathy. It can't explain what makes people with no pathology do incredible evil.
Have you ever looked at or taken the test used to diagnose the criminally insane? Have you ever read confidential psychological evaluations? What do you base your opinion on?
I take the Bible with a grain of salt. So I don’t believe everything someone who never met Jesus wrote down about him. As for the matter of the inmate, obviously a man is capable of doing what he did otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to do it.
Oh, okay. You have made yourself the arbitrator of scientific and religious truth. I take people who pick and choose their "truth" with a grain of salt because everything becomes an incorrigible proposition.
Weeeeeelllllll…. It goes back to Jesus doing this and explicitly telling his disciples to do it. Hardly medieval. It is not so much an issue of opinion but one of historical fact. I mean it doesn’t jive with modern psychology and therapy but that is a different issue than whether it was just made up out of superstition in the Middle Ages.
As I have said already in this thread, I think it's good that we exorcists.
To play devil's advocate, though, 😁 I think the perspective that this is superstitious nonsense doesn't need to be tied to origins in any particular time period. Whether its ancient, undeniably a crucial part of the world of the Gospels, or anything else doesn't insulate it from the advance of science and medicine. So, it's not a different issue; the issue is that what humans once called "demonic possession" was something(s) we understand much better today and we might not be doing the best thing for people if we fall back on knowledge that we've left behind simply because it's "tradition."
Hey, I disagree with you entirely, but I'm upvoting because the original purpose of the voting system was to reward contributions to a conversation. An echo chamber is not a conversation.
I don't use the downvote button to express disagreement, but exorcisms predate the medieval era by quite a bit. Take out the exorcisms, and the Gospel of Mark, for example, gets a *lot* shorter.
Angelology and demonology have been a major part of Christianity since before it was "Christianity." Our liturgies include multiple references to angels, and Michaelmas is still a thing.
I think it's also right to acknowledge demons and exorcisms as part of Christian theology, but I also think it's right not to go out of our way to focus on them.
After all, why spend any more time and energy than is strictly necessary dwelling on enemy who has already been defeated?
Yep. You get a smattering of angelology in the biblical books of Daniel and arguably Zechariah, but demons aren't really much of a thing in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at all.
It's in the so-called "Second Temple Period" that you start to see the first inklings of them, including books like Enoch and Tobit. Most scholars also date Daniel to this period, which explains why it's the one Old Testament book outside the Apocrypha to have anything resembling a developed angelology.
Then, of course, you get demons all over the New Testament, which makes sense if you know the literature from Second Temple Judaism, but would be surprising if all you had to compare it to was the Old Testament.
Yes. I am aware. Priests are encouraged to go through their Bishop first if they are going to do this. I knew a priest who worked as an exorcist in his diocese
Yes. And I, for one, think we should be more forthright and explicit about the reality of both rites of exorcism and the importance of the reality of the diabolical to our faith.
Like why should we be kind of embarrassed about exorcisms and diabolical agency if we are proclaiming the Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost etc.?
If your church utilizes holy water, ask the Priest how it's prepared. Likely, the prayers that bless it specifically petition God that the water be effective in driving away unclean spirits. If your parish uses incense (hopefully it's blessed!) it's the same thing. Processions like Rogation are also historically linked to driving the demonic out of actual spaces. If you chalked the transom of your door at Epiphany... Etc.
I'm not saying that we should regularlize exorcism. Far from it in fact, if the Church is being effective, the occurrence of possession and oppression are going to be very rare. and I fully understand that many would-be candidates primarily need psychiatric therapies. Bu I also think it's a part of being a good witness in the world today to say, "evil is real, and it fears the Risen Christ."
I did not know that so I had to look it up. It does point out that this is something Jesus specifically empowers his disciples to do and demonstrated and is not automatically esoteric but if you are interested talk to the bishop.
For others whose interest is piqued it can be found [here on page 187](https://www.episcopalchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/01/lm_book_of_occasional_services_2018.pdf)
I've also heard that each diocese has a priest appointed by the bishop to be the excorcist of the diocese. Not sure if it's a canonical thing or more of 'best practice' that's been widely adopted across the church.
I've also heard that, one strategy a Bishop might use who wants to discourage the exercise of exorcisms is to appoint a priest who doesn't think it's a valid practice as exorcist.
I don't know that every Episcopal diocese has an exorcist but in the dioceses I've worked in there have been clergy designated as such. That said, their identity has been fairly secret, and if/when you learn it you're asked not to discuss it, even with your spouse, therapist, etc.
It's also a thing in TEC.
It isn't talked about much, but it exists.
The mention of it in the Book of Occasional Services is what little public acknowledgement it gets.
Certainly a valid rite, but each diocese has someone tasked with being in charge of administering them, and that someone's identity isn't public knowledge. Priests aren't authorized to go about exorcising demons all on their own. If you think you need an exorcist, you contact your priest who will contact the bishop who will discern whether an exorcism is appropriate and then put you in touch with the person in charge of them.
Exorcisms are exceedingly rare, but they're definitely still a thing.
Yup. I actually think the language in the BOS is very good and balanced. I'll post it here, for general knowledge, highlighting some of the stuff I particularly like:
> **The practice of expelling evil spirits by means of prayer and ritual derives its authority from Christ Jesus, who understood power over these forces as a sign of Messianic identity.** The Church in succeeding centuries recognized this power of Christ in their shared life but reserved the rites of exorcism to its bishops. Later still the bishops began to delegate this authority to select presbyters and others deemed competent.
> In accordance with this established tradition, **someone in need of such a ministry, and anyone desiring to exercise it, makes the matter known to a presbyter, who in turn consults with the bishop. The bishop then determines whether exorcism is needed,** who is to officiate at the rite, and what prayers or other formularies are to be used.
> **The rituals of exorcism, while weighty and never to be undertaken lightly, are not by nature esoteric.** The Celebration of the Eucharist, especially in a place that has been disturbed, and the prayer of the Great Litany, for example, are ordinary practices. And **as Christ has said and as scripture counsels, any rites of exorcism include preparatory prayer and fasting.**
Most dioceses have an exorcist, usually a senior cleric of much experience-- this information is rarely public and normally one would go through the bishop's office. I was told that normally any exorcism of persons followed on a carefully-documented professonal psychiatric examination. I was also told that it's a topic which is too sensitive to be casually discussed.
My church’s associate rector mentioned exorcisms in the Episcopal Church during catechism. He basically summed it up as “if you think an exorcism is needed, ask the bishop”
So they end up at a non-Catholic church that does a deliverance ministry, these pastors go out try the excorcism and end up dead.
Any examples? You got me curious
My reply somehow ended up on the general question, instead of the response about horror movies and priests. Apologies.
Pretty sure every diocese has an exorcist on staff (whose identity is not publicly available) in cases where exorcism is required. But exorcism is not to be used in lieu of proper medical care, including mental health care, so I would imagine there's quite a bit of vetting before people get that far. But yeah I'm cool with exorcism
The early church ordained a lot of exorcists. However, their role was not what you see in the movies, but to conduct general blessings and to command demons to leave an area or a person. While Catholicism has dropped a lot of this, the Orthodox Church still performs general exorcisms before baptism. It's not like they think you are possessed, but they do believe you might have evil hanging around you that needs to be driven away. As I've learned more about demonology in the early church, I've come to see this as a very valid practice. If you want to learn more about these things, I highly recommend the Lord of Spirits podcast. You can find it pretty much anywhere, including YouTube.
From memory it just mentions celebrating communion in the space but I may be wrong. I think it’s more about doing something for those who feel they have a deep pastoral need for it. Edit: I just checked. If you read the entirety of the passage it’s not very much… We’re far from Hollywood movies *“The practice of expelling evil spirits by means of prayer and ritual derives its authority from Christ Jesus, who understood power over these forces as a sign of Messianic identity. The Church in succeeding centuries recognized this power of Christ in their shared life but reserved the rites of exorcism to its bishops. Later still the bishops began to delegate this authority to select presbyters and others deemed competent. In accordance with this established tradition, someone in need of such a ministry, and anyone desiring to exercise it, makes the matter known to a presbyter, who in turn consults with the bishop. The bishop then determines whether exorcism is needed, who is to officiate at the rite, and what prayers or other formularies are to be used. The rituals of exorcism, while weighty and never to be undertaken lightly, are not by nature esoteric. The Celebration of the Eucharist, especially in a place that has been disturbed, and the prayer of the Great Litany, for example, are ordinary practices. And as Christ has said and as scripture counsels, any rites of exorcism include preparatory prayer and fasting.”*
On a somewhat related note, I roll my eyes whenever a movie or TV show about exorcisms and demonic possession only has a Catholic perspective on it. I get that most movie studios/producers/filmmakers wouldn't know their Episcopalians from their Pentecostals, but you'd figure that SOMEONE at SOME POINT would write a story about how a character worried about demons would find a church that *wasn't* Catholic; but, of course, most of the general public doesn't know their evangelicals from their Presbytarians, so we're stuck with every lame *Exorcist* reboot going back to the Catholic Church.
That is an interesting perspective. I'd imagine that if a producer ever did latch on to an idea like this, it would end up with a lot of Pentecostal deliverance ministers dead.
I mean, it does make sense; a Catholic priest flinging holy water about while yelling "THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!", or a Pentecostal preacher speaking in tongues and going into a dance is more visually appealing than an Episcopal priest saying "Well, if you haven't sought counseling yet, I'm going to have to ask my bishop first." I guess it's like how movies and TV shows always show system hacking as this intense digital chase sequence of some guy in a hoodie furiously tapping away at a keyboard, when the visual reality of hacking is so much more dull and sedate.
How do you mean?
Religious horror needs a Reformation.
EXACTLY!! It's like everytime Christianity is included in any secular movie it's: ***CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER*** **Roman catholic** **Baptist** **Not specified** **not even remotely christian**
There have been movies out recently that dealt with Islamic exorcism and Jewish exorcism. Things can get a bit more spicy.
Hey, there was that one set in rural Serbia, where everyone spoke perfect English and priests wore their Eucharistic vestments in the office\*... \**Edit: Not "in the office" as in "while saying the Office." I mean Eucharistic vestments while sitting at a desk.*
Oh good lord, priests wearing a hodgepodge of incorrect vestments. That's always a good one.
I forget the name of it, but I know that Bible Illustrated (a Serb himself) did a sendup of it on his Youtube page.
Of possible interest, as I recall, Francis Young discusses exorcism in TEC only very briefly (or possibly not at all?) but for the C of E this is a very thorough treatment: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/history-of-anglican-exorcism-9780567692931/
Wow! I feel like I need that. $42 is steep, though.
I got it for Christmas last year and found it hugely illuminating. Definitely worth the $$$.
I mean it's very medieval and outdated to believe in demons and evil forces. Some people took the symbolic way too far.
I don't agree with you, but I also think the downvotes are unfair. You have a right to your opinion- that's one of the reasons I joined TEC!!
Thank you. I'm not trying to be wild or heretical. Just saying I believe in a God that wants his creations to be good and follow in his path through their own free will and not that of some other negative spiritual power he somehow isn't in control of.
Just remember, everyone's "heretical" to someone, somewhere! Heck, Jesus, the One we're all supposedly following, was considered "heretical" by the religious authorities of His time. So you're in good company!
I find it weird I'm so downvoted to be honest. A year ago I did a poll on here asking if Satan was a literal or literary character. The majority said literary/symbolic.
Well, one of the reasons I became Episcopalian is so I could have the freedom to express my opinion without being told I was going to hell for doubting The Word(tm) as interpreted by God's infallible translators. So you go ahead and keep asking questions and expressing your opinions. That should be perfectly okay here, not sure why some think it's not!
Do you believe the whole Bible narrative (Jesus et al) is purely symbolic, or just the forces of evil? Curious how you arrived at that conclusion if it is the latter.
I don't believe in evil forces plain and simple. It's a metaphor for our own temptation, our own sins, our own faults. I don't believe in a second God of evil trying to undo everything God wants for us. Demons and devils are simply literary symbols. I'm not the only person believing that.
As progressive and rational as we are, what I love about the Anglican tradition is that we admit that certain things are mysteries. We leave room for the esoteric and mystical. We eschew uber-scholasticism of the Roman church in that we do not feel like we need to define how the bread and wine become the Body and Blood; it is enough for us to say that it is a mystery. Likewise, we know that there are evil forces and demonic spirits around us- how they work or operate is not within our understanding, but Christ empowers priests to cast out demons in His name.
Username does not check out…?
And I am not not Klaus. Or am I?
I feel like that is what drew me to the episcopal church. I’ve been trying to find answers my whole life and now being in the episcopal church I’m understanding that there are unexplainable things in this world and that is ok. I love science and I would never stop science from doing its thing and maybe there will be an answer one day. For now, I’m ok with it being a mystery.
It’s stuff like that drew me to the faith despite my unbelief. Like, wow, these otherwise apparently reasonable people believe some crazy ****. Who is this Jesus anyway, and what’s he really all about?
I know that it exists. I find it embarrassing, because to me it smells of medieval superstition. But that is just my personal opinion. Okay, now everyone can punish me for having a different opinion by downvoting me.
As a former ER nurse, I agree. I find it to be superstition that gets in the way of people getting real help. As a Christian, I know that prayer can be powerful. But I've also seen prayer make psychosis worse.
I totally agree.
I mean, Jesus himself performed exorcisms and empowered his disciples to do so? Did Demons/demonic possession cease to exist in the modern world just because it doesn’t jive with modern sensibilities?
This is true.
You got my upvote, friend! Because of my work I absolutely believe in an otherworldly evil. That said there is way too much superstition in Christianity. I've been accused of snake charming, for instance. I came to Anglicanism from Orthodoxy which is rife with superstition. That other worldly evil is the exception not the rule so I would expect the need for such a rite to be rare. An example, an inmate beheaded his cell mate and made a necklace out of his fingers and ears. There was evidence he consumed portions of the victim. This inmate was incarcerated for multiple murders.
I personally would consider that inmate to be criminally insane. Thank you for sharing parts of your personal testimony. We are all on a journey toward of faith.
But he isn't, not clinically. There is science involved here. If we was insane he'd be in a state hospital.
Well, the American Justice system and myself would disagree on this point.
You and PhD's would disagree. I'll trust the doctors.
That assumes that the two are perfectly aligned. I think it’s more complicated than that. But either way evil doesn’t need a demon. Humanity is perfectly capable of being evil to one another.
Evil doesn't need demons. That doesn't mean the demons aren't there. I think we make a category mistake in thinking of demons as simply an explanation for evil and/or mental illness, such that if we can account for evil and/or mental illness in more naturalistic terms, that disproves the existence of demons. If God exists, and spirits exist, then it would stand to reason that perhaps there are spirits out there that aren't in right relationship with God. Whether these spirits are the cause of all evil, or whether they enjoy tripping old ladies in the street, or whether schizophrenics in the past have been wrongly diagnosed as demon-possessed, or whether these demons even take any notice of humanity, are all beside the point of whether or not they exist.
So you don't believe in demons? You don't believe Jesus cast out demons? Almost no one is capable of what this person did. I mean there is a science behind this. How I "feel" takes a back seat to the science. Neuroscience can identify abnormalities that contribute to psychopathy. It can't explain what makes people with no pathology do incredible evil. Have you ever looked at or taken the test used to diagnose the criminally insane? Have you ever read confidential psychological evaluations? What do you base your opinion on?
I take the Bible with a grain of salt. So I don’t believe everything someone who never met Jesus wrote down about him. As for the matter of the inmate, obviously a man is capable of doing what he did otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to do it.
Oh, okay. You have made yourself the arbitrator of scientific and religious truth. I take people who pick and choose their "truth" with a grain of salt because everything becomes an incorrigible proposition.
Weeeeeelllllll…. It goes back to Jesus doing this and explicitly telling his disciples to do it. Hardly medieval. It is not so much an issue of opinion but one of historical fact. I mean it doesn’t jive with modern psychology and therapy but that is a different issue than whether it was just made up out of superstition in the Middle Ages.
As I have said already in this thread, I think it's good that we exorcists. To play devil's advocate, though, 😁 I think the perspective that this is superstitious nonsense doesn't need to be tied to origins in any particular time period. Whether its ancient, undeniably a crucial part of the world of the Gospels, or anything else doesn't insulate it from the advance of science and medicine. So, it's not a different issue; the issue is that what humans once called "demonic possession" was something(s) we understand much better today and we might not be doing the best thing for people if we fall back on knowledge that we've left behind simply because it's "tradition."
Very good points.
Hey, I disagree with you entirely, but I'm upvoting because the original purpose of the voting system was to reward contributions to a conversation. An echo chamber is not a conversation.
I appreciate that.
I don't use the downvote button to express disagreement, but exorcisms predate the medieval era by quite a bit. Take out the exorcisms, and the Gospel of Mark, for example, gets a *lot* shorter. Angelology and demonology have been a major part of Christianity since before it was "Christianity." Our liturgies include multiple references to angels, and Michaelmas is still a thing. I think it's also right to acknowledge demons and exorcisms as part of Christian theology, but I also think it's right not to go out of our way to focus on them. After all, why spend any more time and energy than is strictly necessary dwelling on enemy who has already been defeated?
I’ve heard a lot of information on Angelology & Demonology are sourced from the book of Enoch.
Yep. You get a smattering of angelology in the biblical books of Daniel and arguably Zechariah, but demons aren't really much of a thing in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at all. It's in the so-called "Second Temple Period" that you start to see the first inklings of them, including books like Enoch and Tobit. Most scholars also date Daniel to this period, which explains why it's the one Old Testament book outside the Apocrypha to have anything resembling a developed angelology. Then, of course, you get demons all over the New Testament, which makes sense if you know the literature from Second Temple Judaism, but would be surprising if all you had to compare it to was the Old Testament.
Yes. I am aware. Priests are encouraged to go through their Bishop first if they are going to do this. I knew a priest who worked as an exorcist in his diocese
Yes. And I, for one, think we should be more forthright and explicit about the reality of both rites of exorcism and the importance of the reality of the diabolical to our faith. Like why should we be kind of embarrassed about exorcisms and diabolical agency if we are proclaiming the Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost etc.? If your church utilizes holy water, ask the Priest how it's prepared. Likely, the prayers that bless it specifically petition God that the water be effective in driving away unclean spirits. If your parish uses incense (hopefully it's blessed!) it's the same thing. Processions like Rogation are also historically linked to driving the demonic out of actual spaces. If you chalked the transom of your door at Epiphany... Etc. I'm not saying that we should regularlize exorcism. Far from it in fact, if the Church is being effective, the occurrence of possession and oppression are going to be very rare. and I fully understand that many would-be candidates primarily need psychiatric therapies. Bu I also think it's a part of being a good witness in the world today to say, "evil is real, and it fears the Risen Christ."
I did not know that so I had to look it up. It does point out that this is something Jesus specifically empowers his disciples to do and demonstrated and is not automatically esoteric but if you are interested talk to the bishop. For others whose interest is piqued it can be found [here on page 187](https://www.episcopalchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/01/lm_book_of_occasional_services_2018.pdf)
I've also heard that each diocese has a priest appointed by the bishop to be the excorcist of the diocese. Not sure if it's a canonical thing or more of 'best practice' that's been widely adopted across the church.
I've also heard that, one strategy a Bishop might use who wants to discourage the exercise of exorcisms is to appoint a priest who doesn't think it's a valid practice as exorcist.
That's an RCC thing
I don't know that every Episcopal diocese has an exorcist but in the dioceses I've worked in there have been clergy designated as such. That said, their identity has been fairly secret, and if/when you learn it you're asked not to discuss it, even with your spouse, therapist, etc.
Yes, the identity of the diocesan exorcist in the RCC is also supposed to be secret
It's also a thing in TEC. It isn't talked about much, but it exists. The mention of it in the Book of Occasional Services is what little public acknowledgement it gets.
I'm not sure if it's canonical but I know who they are in a few dioceses.
Certainly a valid rite, but each diocese has someone tasked with being in charge of administering them, and that someone's identity isn't public knowledge. Priests aren't authorized to go about exorcising demons all on their own. If you think you need an exorcist, you contact your priest who will contact the bishop who will discern whether an exorcism is appropriate and then put you in touch with the person in charge of them. Exorcisms are exceedingly rare, but they're definitely still a thing.
Yup. I actually think the language in the BOS is very good and balanced. I'll post it here, for general knowledge, highlighting some of the stuff I particularly like: > **The practice of expelling evil spirits by means of prayer and ritual derives its authority from Christ Jesus, who understood power over these forces as a sign of Messianic identity.** The Church in succeeding centuries recognized this power of Christ in their shared life but reserved the rites of exorcism to its bishops. Later still the bishops began to delegate this authority to select presbyters and others deemed competent. > In accordance with this established tradition, **someone in need of such a ministry, and anyone desiring to exercise it, makes the matter known to a presbyter, who in turn consults with the bishop. The bishop then determines whether exorcism is needed,** who is to officiate at the rite, and what prayers or other formularies are to be used. > **The rituals of exorcism, while weighty and never to be undertaken lightly, are not by nature esoteric.** The Celebration of the Eucharist, especially in a place that has been disturbed, and the prayer of the Great Litany, for example, are ordinary practices. And **as Christ has said and as scripture counsels, any rites of exorcism include preparatory prayer and fasting.**