Demonic exorcism isn’t just a solid premise for horror films. It’s also the hook for an increasingly popular group of pentecostal pastors who leverage social media, spiritual warfare, and outrage to spread their message.
Tennessee pastor Greg Locke is the most prominent member of a supergroup of evangelical ghostbusters who call themselves the “Demon Slayers.” Together, they cross promote videos of supposed exorcisms (which they call “deliverance”), host live events that attract thousands of believers hoping to rid themselves of infernal forces, and even produce feature-length films.
Reporter Sam Kestenbaum embedded himself in Greg Locke’s operation, Locke Media, to see this algorithm-fuelled demon slaying first hand. He wrote about his experience in a longform piece for Harper’s Magazine and told us about personally witnessing a massive congregation shriek and convulse during a tent revival group exorcism.
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SOURCES:
https://harpers.org/archive/2024/08/the-demon-slayers-sam-kestenbaum-exorcisms/
https://www.ourmansfieldandarea.org.uk/content/topics/religion/john-darrell
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2016/05/01/target-blasting-pastor-greg-locke-channels-anger-new-way/83615088/
Welcome to the QAA Podcast, episode 292, American Exorcists, featuring Sam Kestenbaum.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokotansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
Jake has been exercised mid-sentence.
We love that for you.
Yeah, that's how it goes.
Well, my goal today is definitely to turn you Catholic, if we can exercise, you know, your heathen religion out of you.
Yeah, I mean, I'm halfway there.
I find that in moments of, uh, true stress, uh, I'm not praying to Hashem.
I'm going, Jesus!
And I want to put a demon into Travis.
That's my goal today.
Yeah, can we take the demon out of me and put it into Travis?
That would be, that'd be a better show overall, I think.
How's it going, Sam?
Welcome back to the podcast.
Thank you guys.
Happy to be here.
Yeah, it's amazing.
We're all in the room together.
Jake is not because he is sick.
Um, so maybe, maybe we could have like healed you, dude.
You ever considered some hands-on?
Uh, yeah.
You might have healed me, but you would have all, uh, insickened yourselves, uh, in the process.
You would have all left with a terrible virus.
That's true.
Jake's demon is so powerful, you don't even want to bring him to the exorcism because everyone ends up leaving with a demon of their own.
Everybody ends up leaving with a stuffy nose.
Every schoolchild in the United States is taught that the earliest European settlers of the New World were Puritans who made the dangerous journey across the Atlantic in order to escape religious persecution.
The Puritans believed that the Church of England was too similar to the Roman Catholics, too reliant on sacraments for salvation, too integrated with the government, and insufficiently devoted to a literal reading of the Bible.
What was less known is that one of the theological differences between the Puritans and the Anglicans was the role of the devil and demons in day-to-day life.
The Church of England did not normally recognize the ritual of exorcism.
Near the end of the 16th century, the English Puritan John Darrow was even imprisoned for claiming to drive out evil spirits during his travels across the country.
The episode resulted in a law declaring that no one could practice exorcism without a license from an Anglican bishop.
So when the Puritans established themselves in New England, they became free to recognize and fight demonic forces.
In addition to battling the Brutal Elements and the native Pequot people, who were nearly eliminated entirely in the 1636 war, the Puritan settlers engaged in a spiritual battle against the demons who threatened every godly man, woman, and child.
You actually kind of look like a demon fighter, like you have a Van Helsing vibe.
Your hair is longer than I've ever seen it.
Yeah.
I haven't seen you in nine months in person.
I feel like we're maybe breaking the illusion of the listener that we're always just in a closet together when we're recording, but it is so long and so luscious.
So I thought I'd interrupt you just to say that.
Are you going to ever develop a single white hair?
It's got to happen eventually.
There's not much going on.
I got a little in my beard.
Can I kiss you?
No.
Okay.
That was a good try.
That was a very good try.
Very smooth.
I warmed him up and everything.
Almost happened.
Bullshit.
Travis, do you ever put it back in a ponytail or do you just let it flow like that?
What about like a top?
You should do a top knot.
No, no.
Sometimes I tie it back.
Yeah.
He does look really good.
Doesn't he?
You look good too, though.
You have like a kind of a living hair, you know?
It's like the curls are very... I bet Jake wishes he had as Semitic a curl as you.
Yeah, I'm on so many drugs in the hopes that my hair will one day look like that, but you know...
It would be so funny if, like, your hair grew back but it was curly.
You just had, like, a perm finally.
My dad got a perm in the 70s before my parents got married.
Yeah, he got himself, like, a very nice-looking Cat Stevens-style perm.
There are pictures.
It looks very good.
It looked good on me, I think.
Oh, you mean Yusuf Islam?
Yeah.
We've interrupted, like, really well-researched Travis's dramatic... That's the point.
That's the point, Sam.
Please, go on, Travis.
Cotton Mather proclaimed in 1693 that, quote, the New Englanders are a people of God settled in those which were once the devil's territories.
Later, in Jonathan Edwards' famous 1741 sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, he warned colonists that, quote, the devil stands ready to fall upon them and seize them as his own.
Over the past few hundred years, the level of concern about the influence of demons has ebbed and flowed, but never gone away entirely.
In 2024, the most active and prominent torchbearer of the tradition of American Protestant demonology is Pastor Greg Locke of the Global Vision Bible Church in Tennessee, though he and his allies prefer the term Deliverance over Exorcism.
In recent years, Locke has made a name for himself by making outrageous comments during his Tent Revival-style sermons.
With supercharged Pentecostal energy, he has claimed that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected as president.
So, I'm here to tell you, I've said it Sunday, I'll say it again, I got in a lot of trouble then, I'll get in more now.
Joe Biden ain't the President of the United States!
He's a fake!
He's a phony!
He's a hypocrite!
And God's gonna uncover that nonsense!
And he's gonna kick his story tale out of that White House!
He doesn't belong there!
Never has!
Never will!
That's my story!
I'm sticking to it!
If that means you don't come back Sunday, that.
Is.
Okay.
Oh my God, he does like a little, like, goblin dance at the end, where he's doing a jig on each foot.
He has like teenager and old man energy at the same time.
Like he looks like both a child and like a dying man in the exact same time.
It's amazing.
Sam, you've spent a lot of time with him, right?
I have, yeah.
Does he ever do the little dance in person?
Like, does he get that animated just in everyday conversation, or is that reserved for, like, okay, and now I'm on, and, you know?
Yeah, no, I mean, actually, his, like, offstage persona is surprisingly gentle.
Of course it is.
He has a real nice bedside manner, so to speak, when he's dealing with an interpersonal level.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I could get more into it, but there was a book of poetry that he wrote that I did not get my hands on that I think would show some of Greg Locke's, the softer side of Greg Locke, which I think doesn't come across in these sermons.
That makes sense.
That's such an American thing.
It's like, and it's showtime.
And then you start dancing and screaming.
He has also insisted that his congregation not wear masks or get vaccinated against COVID-19.
The Delta variant was nonsense then, it is nonsense now.
You will not wear masks in this church!
You will not wear masks in this church!
I'm telling you right now, do not get vaccinated!
Do not get vaccinated!
I don't care what you think about me!
I don't need your money!
I don't need your hand clap!
I don't need more people on social media to follow me!
I ain't following along with it!
He did the dance again.
Wow.
He does a little dance.
He just jumps from foot to foot.
It's almost as if he's a marionette and God is, you know, making him dance.
I think he's possessed with the demon of showmanship.
I don't know.
He moves pretty well for a man of his age.
I'll say that.
Yeah?
Travis, you don't think you could do a dance like that?
I think I could, but I think it would be challenging.
Like now?
Like right now?
Yeah, I think I could, but I got a podcast to record right now.
Okay, that's fine.
So not at this very second.
And though Greg Locke himself denies any affiliation with QAnon, he has promoted the QAnon claim that President Biden, Oprah, and Tom Hanks are all sex traffickers.
These bunch of pedophiles in Hollywood are gonna be exposed for who they are.
I don't care what you think about fraudulent Sleepy Joe.
He's a sex-trafficking, demon-possessed mongrel.
He's of the left.
He ain't no better than the Pope and Oprah Winfrey and Tom Hanks and the rest of that wicked crap.
God is gonna bring the whole house down.
I said he's gonna bring the whole house down.
Yeah, he probably gets his 10,000 steps in really well.
Well, he's also an endurance biker.
Okay, that makes sense, yeah.
And I tried my best to do a workout with him as part of... Oh, God.
It's kind of a profile technique, is you do some activity with somebody.
Yeah, you started your own church.
And I tried to get him to take me out on the bikes there outside Nashville.
It didn't happen, but that's...
I'm open to the possibility of a return trip to go biking with Greg Locke.
But yeah, he's a fitness guy.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And I mean, I think it helps him, like, by his own accounting, it helps him, like, cool off.
Like, he needs to put in, like, 30 miles, 40 miles of biking or he's, like, too amped up, which I can sort of see.
The negative attention that Greg Locke has received for comments like these have done nothing to slow the growth of his audience or his company, Locke Media.
Locke has joined forces with like-minded revivalists to form a supergroup that calls themselves the Demon Slayers.
Let's go.
He's on his Buffy vibe.
He's in his Buffy era.
To better understand these 21st century exorcists, our guest today, reporter Sam Kestenbaum, embedded himself with Locke Media and the Demon Slayers as they staged one of their conferences.
He wrote all about his experiences in a report for Harper's Magazine headlined, The Demon Slayers, The New Age of American Exorcisms.
Sam, thank you so much for joining us today.
Happy to be here.
It's a really fantastic report.
Well written.
It's engaging.
I think it's fair to say that you got closer to Greg Locke's operation than any other reporter who has covered him so far.
Thank you.
That's why you're covering up for his rampant drug use.
I want to start off by asking, well, like, how are you actually able to, like, directly work with Lawk Media as they put on the conference for thousands of people?
So, I've been writing about Pentecostal media, charismatic, wonder-working scene milieu for, I don't know, like, Like seven years off and on in different capacities.
That includes writing about people like Trump prophets, the charismatic evangelists who popularized this idea that Trump was a prophesied figure to win the election, wrote about Charisma Media, which is a Pentecostal publishing house that published a lot of those prophecies and And also about Faith Healers.
So in different venues and in different contexts, I've written about this whole scene, which allowed me, I think, a kind of a vocabulary to approach Greg Locke.
So having kind of watched this Pentecostal space for a number of years, I knew about Greg Locke.
I knew about his kind of his MAGA rise to infamy, where he was featured on, you know, basically Every news report that is writing about Christian nationalism, January 6, all of these nightmares of Christian nationalism, and he's a prominent figure in that world.
I remember seeing the exorcism movie that he put out, Come Out in Jesus' Name, and this was actually screened in theaters around here, and I went to see one in Thousand Oaks.
And I remember being in the theater when Greg Luck comes on screen and there's this sort of added value portion where he actually does deliverance, does exorcism through the screen.
It's not actually totally synchronized to Nashville, but he's doing a live exorcism or some approximation of it.
And people in the theater begin convulsing, dropping to the floor.
Demons are manifesting, you know, right in AMC mall.
Popcorn thrown in the air.
This is why the stocks went up!
They're wasting their popcorn!
Now, that's demonic.
I mean, the popcorn might be demonic already.
Yeah, that's true.
But still.
Everybody knows the devil lies in that, like, butter syrup that you could put on popcorn.
100%.
I mean, that's the deal.
I mean, like, I went and saw, you know, the movie The Beekeeper, and during that movie, Jason Statham didn't come out and exercise any demons, you know?
That's included in the price of the ticket, apparently, for this movie.
Exercising demons.
It is.
And you guys, you did a piece, you saw some Christian films.
You did a piece on, I think, Left Behind, which was also distributed by Fathom, which is the same company that distributed this.
And also in that one, there was also a live component, I believe, or some added value.
It wasn't demon exorcism, but it was...
I believe it was a governor coming on screen after the movie to say a prayer with the audience.
Yeah, Mike Huckabee came out and asked people to receive Jesus into their hearts at the end of that film.
Yeah.
Right.
So I was seeing basically Greg making his transition into a Christian filmmaker in some respects and also edging or moving closer to this charismatic religious expression, which he wasn't raised up in the Pentecostal Church.
He sort of became more interested in Holy Spirit, charismatic religious experience in more recent years.
So that was a curious and interesting thing for me to think about.
And The media making aspect of his ministry as it kind of flourished into this cinematic expression, I knew that was interesting.
And I reached out to Greg around the release of this movie because I knew people want to talk about their movies and got in touch with Greg Locke, Locke Media, which is the company that he founded with somebody else.
And I approached them and said, I want to know about your movies.
I want to know about the movie making you're doing.
I want to know about your craft there.
And, you know, I think I find, and we spoke about this I think last time when we were talking about Clay Clark and the Reawaken America tour, is that people are interested in talking about what they're up to.
And if I can approach them with interest and curiosity about their craft, whether this is sort of culture war spectacle or exorcism movie making, people are interested in that, are receptive to that curiosity.
And, you know, I think in me they saw somebody, and I get into this into the piece, you know, they saw somebody who is also a kind of a storyteller and Locke Media prized themselves on making, you know, exciting films.
You know, I'll leave that, I'll leave that to the listener or to you guys to decide whether Come Out in Jesus Name 1, Come Out in Jesus Name 2, and the various spinoffs are, you know, compelling movie making.
But there's something going on here that I found really compelling.
I want to get into the history of Greg Locke because I think, like most people, I had never heard of him until all of a sudden these clips of him saying outrageous things that were often collated by a lot of reporters started going viral.
It was just worrying because it seemed like he was just saying the craziest things and then he became concerned about the state of American Christianity.
But it sounds like he has kind of a dramatic Christian testimony, and it starts in his youth, where he came from this broken home, where he struggled in school, he got in trouble with the law a lot.
And while researching, I found this passage from a 2016 report in The Tennessean.
Greg Locke screamed, while his stepfather shouted back, filling the boy's bedroom with bitterness and profanity.
Locke threw a suitcase, knocked over his speakers, and raged against the older man, while his anxious mother pleaded with them both, calm down!
Quit!
Quit!
Calm down!
Suddenly, the fight went out of the stepfather.
He just walked out of the room.
Locke shoved some clothes in a duffel bag, stormed out of the house, and waited for his grandfather to pick him up.
Now 39, Locke can't even remember what started the fight.
He just remembers being filled with hate and rage.
Always had been.
I mean, I think that's really interesting.
I'm like, how much of his, I guess his, you know, his difficult upbringing is kind of fueling his energy on stage, do you think?
Well, I think that his story as being a bit of a rough guy or having a rough past, you know, one is like not uncommon among a kind of a saved Christian evangelist.
You know, I think it's a really inviting story.
One of the taglines for the church, I think, is a place where broken people become whole or something like that.
Yeah, you want to be, you know, dirty, fallen.
You want to be rough before you're sharpened by God, you know?
I mean, that's the whole point of a testimony, right?
There has to be a before and after.
And especially with the kind of old school style that Greg Locke, I think, really hones and kind of has mastered.
It has a down home feel.
You know, it's fitting that he's right outside Nashville, which is, you know, a place of like, you know, where country music as like a high production product is produced.
And in some ways, Greg Locke is a kind of a high production country pastor who has made choices over the years to hold his services in tents when he could do otherwise.
The tent that I worked under, I mean, it is technically a tent, but this is like a pretty sturdy structure that is maybe sort of tent in name only, but it still has a feeling of a revivalistic gathering out in the field.
Yeah, of course.
It's authenticity, right?
That's part of the product.
Even if it's like, like you said, almost like a Disney-fied version of the tense of yore.
And so he got into preaching as a teenager.
He got on the radio.
He discovered that he had a talent for it, apparently.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, I mean, he was arrested a number of times growing up by his own, you know, by his testimony.
And he ended up in a Christian home for wayward youth, where he came to Jesus and began pretty soon finding his legs, not just as a saved person, but as an evangelist.
And he In his teens, he was on the radio preaching.
When he was a younger man, starting out his ministry, he really found a way to harness these sort of theatrical stunts for, you know, stunts for Jesus.
He would do something like, he did like a marathon bike across the country to raise church funds.
He was up in a construction lift for a number of days doing kind of a prayer marathon up there.
Backpacking, giving out Bibles.
So these are, you know, kind of attention-grabbing, uh, you know, stunts.
He would, he would certainly call them stunts even now that, you know, for a cause that he cared about.
But it really was in these, in the theatrics that I think he really found his, his gift, so to speak.
Yeah, like all these stunts, they sound like the premise of, like, YouTube videos that are designed to go viral.
Yeah, and this is, you know, of course, pre-YouTube, he, you know, would get, you know, the Tennessean or other reporters to come watch it or, you know, come speak with him.
Greg Locke's theatrical streak included releasing a rap video titled Victims of the Traffic under the name Rev Rhymes.
And the song promotes this dramatic conception of the problem of child sex trafficking.
Rev Rhymes.
There's an evil in these streets, but people, they keep walking.
The government is hush hush and preachers ain't talking.
Everybody's quiet as a mouse.
Cause you don't get concerned unless it happens in your house.
I see it on the news all the time.
So no more can I keep silent so I'm bossing out this rhyme.
It's time to lift the lid on a subject that ain't nice.
They snatching up our kids, settling them out like they merchandise.
We've overlooked it like a big misplacement.
Not thinking about the girls beat up naked in a basement.
Jesus Christ, that's tasteless.
Um, it is awesome though, like being, you know, in the kind of scene that he's in, it's a bit like getting to never leave high school where the talent show is like the competition, right?
You don't ever have to be good in any actual way.
It's just like, yeah, if you're like a decently drama kid oriented guy and you decide to go into preaching, you can do everything you fucking wanted.
You get to rap, you get to, you know, Goof around on stage, do your little dances, and you're like the best in the Christian scene.
Yeah, you're constantly winning the talent show.
Yes, that's exactly it.
Your life is just winning every day over and over.
You get off stage to, you know, applause, and you have people who want to film your rap video.
It sounds awesome, actually.
I've really rarely seen something as awful as someone beat up Nicky in the basement.
It's like, that sucks, buddy.
It really fucking sucks.
I mean, but this is part of the, I mean, the evangelical Pentecostal tradition, right?
The idea that as a Preacher, you're not supposed to merely impart information or wisdom.
You're supposed to get your congregation fired up and impart an emotional experience, and this somehow gets them closer to God.
And how you do that is through these shows, this dramatic showmanship, right?
Yeah, there's something there for sure.
I mean, you know, the interesting thing with Greg is that, you know, when he was putting this video out, he would have been a Baptist, so he would have actually not believed in the wonder working that he would, you know, come to do later in life.
That is, like, he would think that miracle working ceased in modern times.
This is the Baptist position.
And he was actually, like, really adamant about actually speaking out against people who did that sort of wonder working, like a Benny Hinn.
He wrote a whole book about Benny Hinn, who's a faith healer, and about how He's a heretic for doing what he does.
So he had the theatrical before he had the kind of supernatural aspect of his ministry, which is interesting.
Yeah.
I mean, to the outside viewer, there is no difference between a Baptist and a Pentecostal.
You know, these are all just goofy versions of like American Protestantism.
But yeah, that's so funny, though, that he's like, you know, policing territory and then switching sides, of course.
I mean, you know, whatever works.
It's time to make movies.
It's time to adapt the faith.
What really made the Greg Locke that way, as we know him today, was social media.
And he first found viral popularity in 2015-2016 thanks to videos of him making homophobic and transphobic rants.
Specifically, he railed against the legalization of same-sex marriage and targets gender-neutral bathroom policy.
And when you talk about those experiences in your report, I mean, it kind of sounds like he was, I don't know, a lot more calculating than maybe I thought he was.
I mean, was this when he sort of like first sort of like got tuned into realizing the power of social media and controversy to get attention for himself?
I think so.
He put those clips on Facebook and will say now that he didn't anticipate that they would go as viral as they did.
He continued to make these little kind of bite-sized videos that he would actually record on like handheld.
You know, the production was very low-key.
He's just like in his truck in a parking lot angry about stuff.
That's actually high production value.
That's the preferred production value for right-wing videos.
You have to be in your truck alone in a parking lot.
I mean, I mean, I think, you know, we're joking about it, but I mean, I think that's probably right.
I mean, you know, probably that was like a major part of the appeals.
It's not Joel Osteen.
It's not.
Yeah.
You know, it's like it's your angry uncle telling you how it really is in the parking lot.
Well, you don't stay that way for long.
You know, I mean, look at Jay-Z.
You know, he may once have been, you know, in the streets, but now he's like hanging out with Marina Abramovich or whatever, you know.
We all wish for the reasonable doubt mixtapes or whatever.
The difficult thing about talking to Greg about these things now is, as we'll get into, there's a way that he narrates his viral fame sort of backwards.
And so if in the piece he's saying, you know, these things went viral, it went boom, boom, boom, viral, these clips exploded, in a way, as we'll get into, he narrates his rise to QAnon fame as being a natural step in his progress ultimately as an exorcist.
So, this recognition about the power of social media leads to the creation of Lock Media, his company, in 2016.
Now, how did that come about?
Okay, so yeah, he's making these truck videos, kind of grassroots, low-production videos.
So, he's in Las Vegas.
He meets this man, Wayne Kiparis, who's running a Get Out the Evangelical Vote revival series.
Wayne, who's already had a foot in evangelical spaces for some years, approaches Greg and basically pitches him on making a production company together.
Wayne will say now, and I spoke extensively to Wayne, he'll say now that this was a prophetic moment, something that he had seen coming for many years.
He'd had a prophecy given to him that led the way for this.
This is, you know, charismatic speak.
This is Pentecostal speak.
And that's the tradition that Wayne comes out of.
And together, Wayne and Greg start this production company, Lock Media, that they form in Nashville, not far from Greg's church.
And they put out a podcast.
Greg has on his podcast sort of all these characters of the MAGA sphere.
You can say like Charlie Kirk, Roger Stone, people like that.
He's entering into the MAGA ecosystem and those viral videos.
All the best, guys.
Yeah, and people come to visit the church, Roger Stone comes, and this is aided by the media production that Greg is now doing out of his kind of a newsy studio that's near the church where they record these podcasts.
his turn from sort of this right wing Christian politics and culture war stuff to dealing specifically with the world of the supernatural.
And you sort of discussed this, this sort of like this sort of change of environment in 2020 during like the height of COVID when I know the world was upturned for everyone.
And I didn't know this, but it was really interesting.
You talk about in your piece how there was a community of preachers who put out content who sort of recognized that there was a growing appetite for content that dealt with fighting evil supernatural forces.
Yeah, that's right.
You discussed one of the preachers specifically, I forget his name, about the realization that it was this kind of like an audience-led kind of thing where it's like preachers are putting out different kinds of content and noticing that, well, hey, when I talk about demons, I get a huge reaction.
Right.
I mean, that's what people, that's what this cast of preachers will say now, these online media ministers.
You know, I think what happened during COVID and how it affected us socially, religiously, politically, some of that I sort of leave to the historians because, you know, I don't know.
I don't know what 20, 30 years is going to look like.
And I do know that when I speak to people.
When I speak to people about their lives, they certainly narrate 2020 as being something changed for them, whether this is some sort of spiritual yearning, a new professional endeavor, a change in life choice.
But I don't know if that's because we're so close to it.
In many years, our memory of it may change, but right now, certainly many of these ministers talk about 2020 as being a turning point in their following online and an interest in the supernatural, in the demonic.
And I think you guys have done a really good job of following these undercurrents, too, and probably have a sense of, you know, something that goes on and whatever happens in 2020, however we want to describe it.
Yeah, it brought in a new wave of people.
It brought in a more diverse wave of people just from the fact that most people were isolated and behind their computer.
So people were seeking out some of the thrills they usually could get in person through the Internet.
And of course, that led them, a lot of them, down rabbit holes.
I mean, including More people started listening to our podcast, for example.
You know, everybody was seeking a way to feel alive and, you know, kind of consume and understand reality through the computer.
Right.
And I would say, you know, that's also, I think, a part of what Greg's... So Greg's, even before he was getting into demonic stuff, his following really blossomed during 2020 as well, because he's holding services in person, like a lot of these anti-lockdown churches around here and all over the country.
saw their following in person and also a kind of online voyeurism about that sort of explode during that time.
I followed a faith healer here in Los Angeles and wrote about her elsewhere, who also started during the pandemic as a kind of an upstart ministry story, holding outdoor services and saw her following also explode during the pandemic.
And, you know, part of that could be people who are active and uncowed by mandates, continuing to do religion out publicly and provocatively.
And part of it could be some concern with physical health, a sense that something's amiss in the country that is not being, their concerns are not being met by powers that be.
And here come a band, a troop of Well, and you also have this biblical moment, right?
I mean, what's one thing that we know God always does?
clear and colorful language about theills that are plaguing the country.
Well, and you also have this biblical moment, right?
I mean, what's one thing that we know God always does?
It's a plague or some sort of mass illness or a killing of the firstborn, whatever it is.
There was something End Times-y feeling about the pandemic as it unfolded in real time.
That is from the news reports that we were getting that felt like the first act of outbreak to the stories of friends and family members falling ill, some people getting really sick and passing away.
There was At least anecdotally, there was this feeling of reality really shifting towards something that felt like we as a species had kind of evolved beyond.
That modern medicine and modern times, this was something that was untouchable.
You know, we were untouchable by something like this.
And to have it happen, I think cracks open this whole idea of feeling insignificant, feeling powerless, like Julian was mentioning, being isolated, spending more time online.
And I can really easily see how faith and religion and sort of stepping back towards this old method of delivering religious speeches and sermons had this kind of surge in popularity.
I feel like it was a little too New Testament.
Like it wasn't cool enough.
Like it wasn't...
the proper plague enough for some and uh so those are the people that'll be like you know to this day like covid oh that was a psyop you got psyoped you know because i i don't know anybody who died or whatever you know like they just didn't see you know the kind of ravages that they would want from like a real end times event uh yeah so i think it it was both horrible and it disappointed us But also I think it revealed, first of all, that there was a system that could attempt to tell you what to do.
It was very weak in the United States.
It wasn't like, you know, in France where you would get your ID checked if you were like, you know, out and about just to make sure you were going to the grocery store or whatever instead of staying at home.
There wasn't actually any lockdowns.
I mean, people refer to lockdowns here more to do with like the closing of small businesses and stuff like that.
But also, like, at the same time as being told what to do, there was suddenly a sense of the frailty of the system, you know?
And that, so, I mean, it makes sense.
It's like, they're both telling me what to do, and they're weak.
They're not, like, able to help us or provide structure for us or support us, like, you know?
And so, of course, you know, that just generates so much animus.
Right, you have people standing, I remember the videos coming out of New York City where you had people just standing on their balconies shouting at people walking on the street being like, GET BACK INSIDE!
Either that or they're like singing, they're singing a song with people on the next balcony and then posting it to social media like, wow, aren't we so resilient and together?
Yeah, it's not a government coming in and basically saying, here are the steps we are forcing you to take to make things sick.
It's, well, you know, rules if you want them, and left to people to, you know, stand on their porch and scold, you know, those who are not following the rules.
It was a complete mess.
Yeah, it is the perfect moment for capitalism, privatization, neoliberalism in general, because it's like you gut the system, then the system is impotent in moments of crisis, then you point to the system and say, see, we don't need it, it's pathetic, it doesn't work.
And then, of course, everything continues to be privatized and everything, but the state won't tell you what to do.
But you'll get arrested by the Walmart guard or whatever.
Are you American?
Yeah, I love America.
And I am a proud citizen of this country.
Always have been.
Was born here.
And I voted for Trump.
Well, it's going to go on three times this time around.
Yeah, I mean, there's there's something mythic and timesy about this moment.
There's also something very banal.
We can think about so many friends who had friends or colleagues who had some sort of startup story during the pandemic.
They started their Etsy product line.
They are making patches at home.
They have a pop-up kitchen that they're doing.
And in many ways, I also think about these ministers as kind of a small entrepreneurial group of people who are finding a product.
And I don't mean that in necessarily a cutting way, but they found a product in that moment that there was an appetite for.
Mm hmm.
Just for freaking Joe Biden to go and tax it.
Let's get this guy out of here.
Let's get this guy the fuck out.
Oh, wait, he's gone.
So Greg Locke, he recently connected with other preachers who are interested in cleansing the world of demons.
And these other sort of like-minded people included a man named Isaiah Saldivar, who says that he, quote, went from atheist to casting out demons in his living room.
That's so fucking lazy.
Come on.
Step outside a little bit.
You can't even make it outside of the living room.
There's another man named Alexander Pagani, who describes himself as an apostolic Bible teacher with keen insight into the realm of the demonic.
Hey man, that's pretty sus.
Where'd you get those keen insights?
There's also an ex-MMA athlete named Daniel Adams who describes his journey as from cage fighter to Jesus freak.
Cool.
And Daniel Adams, I think, has a really interesting hook because he has a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers called The Supernatural Life.
And it's kind of nuts.
You go to his YouTube page and he's making the thumbnails, he's like making the YouTuber face, but the text is like, possessed by demons?
Yeah, awesome.
And then he sometimes posts videos of himself expelling demons in public places in Florida.
In one video, he is surrounded by admirers in a parking lot in Bushnell, Florida, and right in front of a closed Napa Auto Parts store in the light of street lamps, he directly addresses a demon who has supposedly possessed a woman in attendance.
That's so fucked up, though, because, like, you don't have anybody else gathered, so you just have to fucking pick a follower every day and be like, YOU!
You have a demon in you!
That's so rude.
That's such, like, a fucking, uh, get-get-on-stage, uh, moment, uh, you know, improv.
Well, you know, it seems as though these people, they volunteer themselves.
They feel the demons in them, and they want this fellow to, uh, expel them.
Right.
I mean, you can't be delivered if you aren't already saved.
Hey, man, chill out.
I don't know what's going on here, but, you know, I felt really uncomfortable with the way you looked me in the eyes when you said that.
Religion's in the room.
Here is Adams.
Hey, you.
Who do you think you are to put your hands on her?
Do you not know I'm a Holy Ghost gangster?
Listen, let me get gangster with it because they like that, too.
Oh, my God.
Hey, your time.
Your time.
In her life.
No, no, no.
It comes to an end.
Now, in the name of Jesus Christ, I command you.
Yes, you, you wicked spirit.
You will release this girl.
You will not torment her.
You will not torment her children.
You will not destroy her home.
The light of Jesus has came.
And I command you by his power and his authority.
Get out of here.
Get out of here.
Leave her life.
Leave her life.
Oh, she's getting started.
She's getting the demon act started.
Because what are you going to fucking do?
What are you going to do if somebody points at you and says, you got a demon in you?
You're like, nah, I'm good.
No, you come for that and you want to participate.
But I think it's really, just for the listener, that is a white man fully doing like, oh, you want to get crazy with me, mon?
Oh, you want to talk demons gangsta style?
He had permission from Jesus, the ultimate black man.
I'm feeling Mesopotamian up in this bitch.
I'm glad you got... I can't say that.
What are you talking about?
I didn't say anything.
What are you talking about?
I'm white and Jewish.
We had a guy step in to do that bit.
It was not me.
I mean, it is wild the amount of content that he and his associates can produce just expelling demons.
He pumps out a new video every couple days, it seems like, a lot like this.
He does this sort of street preacher style where he's just out at night in the parking lot and he also does some stuff in his church.
But it seems as though there's not a shortage of demons that need expelling that can be filmed and then put on YouTube.
Definitely.
Yeah, it has the vibes of some of those videos that I see on YouTube of like guys meeting up in the parking lot to show off their cars and do donuts and stuff.
But in this one, they're just sort of gathered around in folding chairs and expelling demons.
And I mean, all the Demon Slayer collective as they kind of...
a little bit tongue-in-cheek began calling themselves are people who don't all do this exact kind of man-in-the-street ministry.
They each have their own kind of flavor to it.
Daniel Adams really does the man-in-the-street style, not exactly shaky, but handheld camera, good production value.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And others might do slightly different styles of, it might be shot in the church, it might be on the street.
They would do a podcast that would be filmed that would not look, you know, so different than the podcast we're doing now.
And they'd be expelling—well, they might be expelling demons or giving advice about those—advice for people who might want to expel demons or get involved in this deliverance business themselves, this deliverance ministry themselves.
Yeah, it's super dramatic.
I mean, it's a great structure for improv, right?
It's like, if the storyline is always like we're casting out a fucking demon, you're going to get a pretty good scene.
It might become a little boring after a while.
It's like an improv scene where someone always takes out a gun.
But yeah, I mean, this is a pretty good template for some dramatic conflict, right?
I mean, God versus Satan.
It's the ultimate conflict.
Right.
And the diagnosing of what type of demon.
Yeah, really?
What types of demons we got?
Many demons.
Let me know.
Like, what do we got?
I mean, there are deliverance manuals that are put out that list pages upon pages upon pages of demons, names of demons, types of demons.
Podcaster is one of them?
Uh, the demon of podcasting could be a demon.
Certainly, you know, the demon of narcissism.
Okay.
The demon of wanting to hear your own voice.
Don't look me in the eyes while you're saying that.
But no, yeah, so there's narcissism.
It's usually kind of loosely correlated around the seven sins or...
No, I mean, it's far-ranging and also quite improvisatory and very au courant, the types of demons that one might have.
It could be, you know, we might have some old-school demons, but we can have demons of ADHD, demons of gluten-free.
Get that demon of Karen out of you!
Exactly.
Very much like Tobin's Spirit Guide.
That's so fun.
Updated.
The demon of playing World of Warcraft!
Get it out of you!
I mean, demons of D&D is certainly a demon I've heard cast out.
There's gotta be an NBA 2K demon.
Because I feel bad all the time playing that game.
I feel hellish, actually.
You're possessed every year you try to get me to buy that shit.
I have a question for Sam.
What do they think of like Ed and Lorraine Warren, like the original demonologists slash demon slayers?
These are probably the most famous demon slayers.
Do they look at them kind of like as idols?
Because they had very famous cases that have been made to many movies and many books over and over.
They're also religious.
They're more, you know, kind of demonologists than they are That's a good question.
I'd like to put that to Greg.
I don't know how familiar they would be with—this is The Conjuring, right?
Yeah, but they're real people.
I mean, they're real people.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think that—I think you're right to bring that up, and I think that the Demon Slayers can't be understood outside of this.
entertainment industry ecosystem of movies about demons, exorcisms, this sort of Halloween jumpscare franchises.
And, you know, these guys are making content with the same melody, the same key.
And, you know, it's done with, you know, more community theater vibes, but it is also about this kind of great haunting of America.
And they are the ones who are squeezing and wrenching these demons out of the country.
Oh, that's an interesting take, that for them it's kind of more about the haunting of our souls in general, that we're all susceptible, whereas, you know, with Ed and Lorraine Warren, like Amityville or the Conjuring case, it is specific places and people.
So, I mean, these Demon Slayers, I mean, they're basically kind of like a content collective.
You know, they cross-promote, and they collaborate, and they all are on the same page about, like, what their ministry is about.
And their biggest production so far is a film, like you mentioned, called Come Out in the Name of Jesus.
It was released just last year.
And the trailer for the film features members of the Demon Slayers talking about the importance of exorcisms, which they call deliverance, and it's intercut with congregants convulsing and screaming.
And he said in the last days, the church will give heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons.
They will begin to listen to demonic doctrines.
He doesn't mind you going to church.
He doesn't mind you praising as long as you don't change.
There's a great awakening that is coming.
The Kingdom of God is not about talk.
Jesus is King!
It's about power and demonstration.
The state of the church in the United States, I believe, needs a reawakening of deliverance because of the evil that's going around.
Christians can be under the influence of satanic oppression.
100% they can.
You see, redemption and salvation is for the lost.
Deliverance is to set the captives free.
Some would even say only Christians experience demon possession.
So what has the impact of this film been?
Because it is a, like I said, it's not just a YouTube video, not just a podcast.
It's like is a feature length film shown in theaters and wound up being profitable as a film.
Yeah, so it was the first theatrical release that Greg and Locke Media put out.
There's since been kind of a spin-off called The Domino Revival that was put out by another demon slayer, Mike Signorelli, and Come Out in Jesus' Name 2, which I was there to help produce at Global Vision, has not yet come out.
The theme could be shifting in real time, I'm told.
I still occasionally get updates about the production.
It's about a wayward reporter wandering to a place he doesn't belong.
Yeah, I mean, I'm hearing that would I mean, that would be good content.
I'm hearing they're calling it deliverance.
But I mean, so among other things, this film represents like, you know, it has a bit more gravitas than these YouTube videos kind of been smoothed out a little bit.
At certain times, they will blur out the faces of people who are going through deliverance, who are being having the demons cast out of them.
So this is in contrast to the Daniel Adams style videos where it's really up in your face.
And so filmmakers, I mean, that's in part a question of getting permissions, but also I think they wanted to they wanted to do something that felt more, I guess, maybe subdued is not the right language because it's not subdued, but more theatrical.
And the storyline really is, you know, in many ways, what we're describing or what we've been describing over the course of this podcast.
It's Greg narrating his story and the story of Demon Slayers as they come to collaborate.
I say in the piece that in structure it owes something to a kind of a heist movie where each character is introduced in time and they each with their own skill or technique and they come to collaborate.
We have Daniel Adams coming in, Isaiah Saldivar, Greg Locke, and They all team up together in the end to do one of these big mass deliverance services, which mass deliverance and sort of one-on-one deliverance also differ in style and look.
And the style that Greg Locke came to do at his tent is what they would call mass deliverance, where he is basically speaking out over the whole crowd at times of thousands, when I was there, many thousands, and listing demon after demon after demon after demon.
And so he's not going person to person to person diagnosing demons, but calling them out over the whole crowd.
So if you're sitting in the crowd and you hear, you know, demon of depression, you at that moment may react right in your seat to that.
That's my demon!
Hey, that's my demon!
I love this idea of like GTA 5 style sermons where you can switch between three demon hunters who each have different skills and abilities.
Okay, your brain is fucking gone, I think.
That's what it sounds like.
Coming together to do a big heist at the end.
Get rid of that depression demon.
Sam, we're putting him in a cage.
Don't worry.
I already am in a cage.
I'm in the computer.
I'm not real.
I'm just, I'm in your computer.
I'm just shouting.
I'm just a voice in your head.
In fact, some might say a demon.
Set the captives free.
So yeah.
So you, um, like you said, you, you worked with this on one of these mass deliverance, um, events.
Thousands of people and you weren't merely a, you know, a passive reporter observing things.
You rolled your sleeves up and, you know, worked with the crew to make this show happen.
So, you know, like, what was that like?
What was it like?
Yeah, it was really interesting.
I wanted to work with Locke Media.
I wanted to work on the production side at one of these events.
And in doing that, see backstage what these things looked like.
I was there when the Demon Slayers, you know, are unwinding backstage over plates of tacos and taking off their sweat-drenched clothing—well, one layer of clothing—and, you know, hear the backstage banter of professional exorcists.
You know, I approach this, honestly, with a respect or like an interest in their media making craft.
These are big productions that require a lot of coordination.
They have drones flying over the crowd.
They have multiple handheld cameras in the crowd, some shooting from the stage, some from the ground, and thousands of people streaming in.
And, you know, doing this sort of participation style, on the one hand, gives really good access to the reporting.
It also invests me in the process in a sometimes unsettling way.
But I think it produces a kind of work that is challenging to produce and also maybe unsettling and challenging for readers, too, to imagine themselves there, invested in this kind of production themselves.
Did you find yourself enjoying it or seeing the appeal of, you know, putting something like this on?
I mean, revivals are a blast, you know?
Travis saying that like he's done many.
I mean, if, you know, if you've been to a, I don't know what, we're a room of millennials, if you've been to like a, you know, an arcade fire or like... I have been to an arcade fire concert.
That was a good guess on my part, yeah.
I mean, these are these are performances and the music they're playing, you know, Spotify available hits by these big evangelical outlets, production companies, and everyone knows the words.
We're all singing along.
It's not kind of hokey, Righteous Gemstones style music.
This is like, sounds like Modest Mouse or like big sweeping productions.
It could be, I mean, Sufjan Stevens is a bad example because he's also a believer.
Yeah.
Praise God.
But he But they, you know, it's a, it's fun and it's a collective, it's a collective experience.
And, you know, to be involved in kind of scrambling around when people start falling to the ground, you know, it's also, that's also kind of thrilling in another way to be invested in helping a production come together.
Yeah, you also discuss in your piece, you know, it seems as though they were very thankful for your help and you were included and everything.
But at one point, one of the, I guess, one of the crew leaders made a point of mentioning the fact that you were a Jew.
And so...
The demon of Judaism is with us!
It didn't seem like they made a big deal about that, but they were interested.
In fact, that was a point of pride.
Even the Jews are coming to this!
This takes place in a part of the piece in the scene where our lanyards are being given out backstage and we're going around for small introductions.
This is so-and-so, this is so-and-so, he'll be handling this.
We were all on a group chat throughout the weekend where instructions were given about who needs to go where, you know, bring the water bottles here, we need more chairs over here, basic production things.
And going around the table or the circle, as it were, I was introduced as a reporter, someone who, you know, an outsider who was there writing about them, embedded with them.
And as an added bonus and maybe as an added marker of my kind of an outsider-ness, but also as a bonus is that he's Jewish.
And this is met with, you know, smiles and kind of cheers.
And there is like a follow-up question where someone wanted to know if I was a Messianic Jew, that is, you know, Jews for Jesus.
And I have to clarify, now I'm a juju.
But people are excited about it.
Someone gives me a hug.
And I should say, you know, a beat about Jewish stuff in Pentecostal circles for listeners or for people who don't sort of know, but this is a scene where Jewish stuff is Really exciting to people.
And the number of shofars and prayer shawls that are being waved and worn and sounded and honked on at such events, there are many of them.
And so the presence of a, I guess, a real live Jew there is exciting.
Step right up!
Boy, especially one with the beard and the curly hair!
So, you know, I'm aware of this interest and I'm not sort of disturbed or unsettled.
In fact, I, you know, I, to be honest, probably lean into it.
Yeah, I'm not unsettled by it.
And I think it actually warms people to my presence in some way.
I want to thank my good friend Greg.
No, no, you can't.
No.
And there was, you know, I say in the piece, there was a question of whether I might go on, you know, you make the joke about whether I would be in a movie or not, but there was, you know, a question raised whether I would be interviewed or whether I'd go on camera, whether they might, you know, I'm making a story about them.
Why couldn't they make a story about me?
They wanted to know, you know, could we put you on camera, interview you about your experience here?
And, you know, I had to politely decline that time, but who knows?
Down the line, I might be in a mock media production.
They're going to make you a star, baby.
What is it about Pentecostal and Judaism?
Is it Old Testament stuff?
Is it the chosen people?
Is it the fact that Jesus himself created essentially a new kind of Judaism which became Christianity?
Is it all that stuff kind of interacting with one another?
Yeah, you got it.
I mean, it's interest in doing old-time religion, doing the ideas right, doing Christianity as Jesus did it or as the apostles did religion.
Yeah, that's what Jesus did was preach to Jews.
I mean, you know, there's a — we can point out, like, some historical ironies here of, like, what Jews do now doesn't really look like ancient Judaism and, you know, the The things that evangelicals or Pentecostals are adopting are more contemporary Jewish signals of Jewishness.
But I think that is like a kind of a technical critique that it doesn't really matter that much to people involved in it.
But I see way more shofar blowing at, you know, Pentecostal revival than you would at a certainly.
I mean, well, because Jews wouldn't really blow a shofar on a regular Sabbath morning.
But yeah, these guys love the shofar.
Hard to play, too.
I mean, if you can blow a chauffeur, you're winning.
I've blown a chauffeur.
Is that... Alright.
All right, all right, enough.
I want you to read a passive from your Harper's Magazine report.
And it's the moment that is really the climax of the show, it seems like the moment that Greg Locke starts commanding out the demons.
And if you are a believer in the crowd, it's the moment that demons are shooting out of people left and right.
And it was really fascinating, because it really, I think, impressed upon me how powerful and Kind of surreal that moment was, even if you're not a believer.
I push through the crowd, a lanyard dangling from my neck, surrounded by the sounds of deliverance.
Squeaks, squeals, a stray bark.
A hand extends into the aisle, gripping my shoulder.
I pass them an airplane barf bag.
Someone begins retching.
When you are at the pounding center of a mass deliverance, the scene can feel shambolic, but there is an order to things, perceptible in real time.
If someone begins twitching and moaning, looking like they're about to go under, the best practice is to clear some space so that they may crumple to the ground without injury.
Don't barge in, but if you find yourself among those assisting the demon tormented, the rule of thumb, like in any good collaborative improv, is an attitude of yes and.
Be supportive.
Don't hog the exorcism.
Be patient but firm.
Tools like special anointing oil or shofars or prayer flags are good and welcome, but not necessary.
At the edge of the tent, a rosy-faced lady is surrounded by a band of six helpers.
My sister was a witch when I was growing up, the lady says, then scrunches her face and howls in a dark, feral voice.
One helper grips her chin and speaks now to the demon within.
Enough of this, they say, clapping hands like a scolding school teacher.
Come all the way out.
The lady's voice turns meek now.
I forgive myself for not taking care of myself, she whispers, cowed and apologetic, for thinking that sex is love.
Exorcisms may drag on for an hour or several.
Locke says his record is 18.
Others last only a few minutes.
I see a girl, no older than 12, kick and howl through deliverance only to bounce back to her feet moments later, playfully chasing her friends outside.
After her exorcism, the rosy lady unpacks a tupperware of snacks, slowly peels a banana, and munches away quietly.
I was reading this, and it occurred to me how few opportunities you have in secular life for this kind of catharsis.
It would be very satisfying to just have a kind of dramatic physical expulsion of everything that's troubling me as they seem to believe they're experiencing.
And I mean, it seems like that's just a big part of the appeal.
Just instead of like, you know, over time, you know, fixing whatever's wrong with you, doing it all in an instant in the spiritual way.
Therapy, and then I'll take you to a rave.
Yeah, it's like the juxtaposition of the miracle and the mundane side by side one another is really interesting.
Yeah, right.
But I just think about the growing popularity of things like ayahuasca or these kind of trauma-inducing psychedelic experiences that I think are probably happening not far from where we are right now.
Oh yeah, I'm tripping right now.
But I mean, I think you're right.
And I'm glad that that came across that this I mean, this is therapeutic.
This is ecstatic.
This is many things, including spectacle and entertainment and at times business.
But it is something is happening there in the crowd for people.
And they come away changed, maybe not change forever, because someone may still have to walk in that that walker or, you know, we'll have to go back to that wheelchair, that wheelchair.
But something really exciting is happening in the crowd when these things take off.
I guess my main takeaway from your whole piece is just the way in which, you know, this group of people have found a way to marry this, you know, this ancient practice of demon slaying or like of exorcism to modern content creation.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, it's easy to think of like, you know, of exorcism as like a very backwards, silly thing that's like maybe a fringe kooks who live in rural areas do.
But here they're bringing it into, you know, the social media age in a way that sort of shared across everyone who has a computer who watches YouTube videos.
And I don't know, it's just I guess I would have never thought that kind of marriage would happen.
If it didn't, as you explain your piece, did in fact happen over the last few years here.
Getting angry at the YouTube comments under my exorcism.
It's like, uh, mid.
I mean, that was, you know, that, I mean, that's the conceit of the piece, right?
Is in many ways I could have written about contemporary exorcisms, but you know, I, I want it to not go and sort of be even, even on a participation level, right?
One could go and say, Oh, I'm going to, they can exercise me.
They can try to exercise this demon for me, or I can learn to do an exorcism.
What I wanted to do was maybe some of that, but really see it from the content side, because what I think the Demon Slayers show us in a compelling way is how religious experience is not diluted by its mediation, its being on TikTok or YouTube, but in fact that's where it's happening.
The religious experience is allowed, it is given breath through these media.
And yet this is maybe the laziest version of all of this possible.
I mean, a lot of people will just be consuming it at home, sitting down.
The people who are doing the exorcisms have the crowd come to them and they get to just exercise them.
It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
You know, they don't even have to travel to like a possessed home or something like this.
You know, I mean, I yearn for the era of the traveling exorcist who had to go to a small peasant's home in, you know, rural Italy to go and do an exorcism.
More ambition?
No.
No, I just think we're the laziest we've ever been.
Collectively.
Yes.
Yeah.
I mean, there's something about just scrolling, I suppose, that feels passive.
Yeah, you can just move on to the next exorcism.
Don't appreciate the one in front of you.
You have a whole selection of exorcisms.
Ah, this one's not as good as this.
Right.
But you could be exorcised through the screen of a computer, too.
Okay.
This is definitely pandemic era, though.
It's like, you can work on Zoom.
You can get exercised on Zoom.
I mean, it sounds like people experience it like you might experience music.
You know, you could listen to the album, but you know, it's just more powerful to see them in person.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Call me when I can get exercised by a vinyl.
That's the real shit.
The warmth of the exorcism is what I want.
I mean, really?
I think I probably could find you some LPs there.
No, I'm joking, but yeah.
There's probably like exorcism hipsters, people who have a collection of the best ones, you know?
Yeah.
If it's a product.
I might be among those.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, that's you.
Really great writing.
A very compelling piece, and I think that's especially important when you're talking about an event that is defined by how compelling it is for participants.
So, good job.
We've been talking to Sam Kestenbaum.
That piece, again, is called The Demon Slayers.
It's in Harper's Magazine.
We're gonna put a link in the show notes.
Read the whole thing because it is really enlightening about this particular, like I said, unique marriage of, you know, Pentecostal tent revival meetings and social media.
Sam, when you work anything else, where can people find more of your work?
They can find me on all of the requisite social media platforms and on my website, samkestenbaum.com.
Cool.
We'll put links to that in the show notes.
And now it's time to exercise the demon of journalism and say goodbye to you.
Thank you for listening to another episode of the QA podcast.
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Listener, until next week, may the deep dish bless you and keep you.
Amen.
Amen.
We have auto-keyed content based on your preferences. - Yes, yes.
We got first and last names of six witches that are in our church.
And you know what's strange?
Three of you are in this room right now.
Three of you in the room right now.
You better look in my eyeballs.
We ain't afraid of you, you stinking witch!
You devil-worshipping Satanist witch!
We cast you out in the name of Jesus Christ!
We break your spells!
We break your curse!
We got your first name!
We got your last name!
We even got an address for one of you!
You so much as cough wrong and I'll expose you in front of everybody in this tent, you stinking witch!
You were sent to this church to destroy us.
You were sent to this church to lure us in.
You were sent to this church to cast spells.
Listen, some of you been sick because you befriended that witch!
Two of you in my wife's latest Bible study, and you know who you are, and we gonna ask you to get out!
Or I'll expose you in front of everybody!
We got all six of their names.
All six of them.
Two of them had already been confirmed before that thing ever even said it.
First and last night?
This chick is new to our church and don't know none of you!
So you got a choice.
You can leave with your spells all by yourself.
Or I'll show up next Sunday with a stage full of brooms.
And I'll give you one and I'll fly your tail up out of this place in the name of Jesus, but we ain't playing your spell-casting, witchcraft, nonsense, sage-burning games.
