We need the woods to be full of imaginary monsters

From the (Glasgow) Daily Record and Sunday Mail: “Satanic fears rubbished after effigies of dead children in Dumbarton woods are revealed to be film props.”

Effigies of dead children discovered by shocked nursery staff were being used as props for a drama student’s film.

It emerged this week that the items, which appeared to be the bodies of youngsters, had been placed at the area in Overtoun Woods by the Dumbarton woman who was filming a piece of work for assessment.

I envy Scottish journalists for their ability to use the verb “rubbished” in a headline. In an age of he said/she said journalism it’s heartening to see such definitive, conclusive language in any newspaper. It’d be nice to see more headlines with such accuracy and candor. “Scientists rubbish senator’s denial of climate change” would be a refreshing change from the waffling equivocation we’ve gotten used to seeing. (“Powell’s allegations to Security Council rubbished by evidence” might even have saved a few million lives and saved the U.S. a few trillion dollars.)

Some people will be terribly disappointed by the Record’s report, though. The earlier reports of effigies of dead children and Satanic graffiti had thrilled them as evidence of the one thing, above all else, that they desperately wanted and needed to believe.

This is a huge part of early 21st-century Christianity. Christians want and need to believe that there are monsters in the woods. Here in America, over the (relatively) short course of my lifetime, white evangelical Christianity has been reshaped and redefined around this very desire, this very need. It is impossible to understand American evangelicalism without understanding this: It is a form of Christianity reconfigured around the central premise that Satanic baby-killers are murdering children out there in the darkness.

Evangelicals aren’t afraid of the killers in the woods, they’re thrilled by them. These monsters are, above all else, exciting. That excitement makes evangelicals feel awake and alive.

And, of course, it makes them feel righteous. What greater confirmation of white evangelical righteousness and rightness could there be? Are evangelicals out there in the woods slaughtering children for Satan? No, no they clearly are not. Evangelicals are, in fact, firmly opposed to going out in the woods to slaughter children for Satan. The evangelical stance against Satanic baby-killing is absolute, unwavering and undeniable. No one could dare to suggest otherwise. No one could possibly dare to suggest that white evangelicals are not, therefore, demonstrably better than those evil Satanic baby-killers.

More than that, just look around at the rest of American culture. Is anyone else in American culture as obsessed with the monsters in the woods? Is there any other group or institution in America that has defined itself so entirely by its firm stance against Satanic baby-killing or against the conspiracy of pedophiles recruiting children to destroy the institution of the family? No. No there is not. And so, obviously, white evangelicals are morally superior to the rest of American culture.

Ahhh, doesn’t that feel good? Isn’t it nice to have such ironclad evidence of our moral superiority?

That’s so much nicer than the situation a generation ago, back when white evangelicalism seemed to be sleepwalking in a moral torpor, unsettled and unsure of how to salve “the uneasy conscience of modern fundamentalism.” In the 1950s and 1960s, white evangelicals seemed as irrelevant to themselves as they did to the larger American culture. Churches and religious leaders were reshaping that culture, but not our kind of churches and religious leaders. The Civil Rights Movement, on a daily basis, for years, underscored the backwardness and moral bankruptcy of white evangelicalism. Second-wave feminism further served to highlight our regressive morality and ethical impotence. On the key moral issues affecting the culture, white evangelicals were clearly and obviously wrong. Worse than, not better than.

It was an intolerable place to be.

One solution would have been to repent — to advocate justice rather than opposing it. But white evangelicalism didn’t take that path. Instead, it struck upon an ingenious solution: If the key moral issues facing the culture make it clear that you’re on the wrong side, introduce a new moral issue on which you can be right while everybody else is wrong.

And thus, 40 years ago or so, white evangelicalism quickly reinvented itself as the righteous and heroic opponent of the Satanic baby-killers out there in the dark. We’ve rearranged our priorities, making this opposition to Satanic baby-killers the central, essential component of our identity. We’ve even rewritten our Bibles to obscure passages that undermine this claim.

Now we’re the Good Guys again. Now we’re right and righteous and better than everybody else.

But wait, doesn’t it matter that it’s all just rubbish? How is any of this supposed to work when we ourselves know that there are no monsters in the woods, no Satanic baby-killers killing babies for Satan?

That’s a feature, not a bug. That’s the beauty of the whole scheme. If we really believed that the monsters were real, then we’d be compelled to do something real in response — something substantial and sacrificial. I mean, come on … if we really believed that Satanic baby-killers were slaughtering millions of children, who could possibly imagine that our ritual response to that reality was in any way adequate? If we really believed that were actually happening, then we would ourselves be monsters. How could litmus tests, quadrennial partisan votes, strident rhetoric and closely scrutinized “firm stances,” in any way, be regarded as a fulfillment of our moral obligation in the face of the supposed “Holocaust” being waged by the Satanic baby-killers?

This scheme works because the monsters aren’t real. That’s what allows us to have our self-righteous cake and eat it too. That’s what allows us to imagine ourselves and position ourselves as exclusively in the right and superior to our depraved culture while  simultaneously not having to actually do anything different except occasionally vote or yell or affirm a firm “stance.”

Those minimal, costless actions don’t need to be effective at stopping the Satanic baby-killers because there are no such killers to be stopped. The only function those actions need to fulfill is the only function they do fulfill — reinforcing the tribal solidarity that ensures our shared false pretense of moral superiority is never internally challenged. Strident rhetoric, reflexive partisanship and the policing of “stances” can, and does, accomplish that.

So don’t listen to the evil liberal media. There are monsters in the woods killing children for Satan. We want them there. We need them there. So they must be there. They must.