scholarly journals Modern Practice, Archaic Ritual: Catholic Exorcism in America

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 811
Author(s):  
William S. Chavez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Demonic Possession ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Ritual Abuse ◽  
Religious Competition ◽  
The Media

The following ethnographic and folkloric analysis of American exorcism practices post-1998 centers on four Catholic priest-exorcists currently active in the United States. After a brief commentary regarding the place of Satanism within contemporary Catholic imagination, this article posits that the Catholic Church’s recent institutional support of its office of exorcist must not be viewed separately from its discursive fear of Satanic cults and larger narratives of religious declension. The current era of exorcism practice in America is chiefly characterized as a response to the media sensationalism surrounding not only prior cases of demonic possession but also of Satanic ritual abuse. Moreover, beyond these explicit issues of religious competition (e.g., Catholics versus Satanic conspirators), the current era of exorcism practice is also implicitly characterized by the changing belief systems of contemporary Catholics. Thus, this article ultimately concerns issues related to religious modernization, the apotropaic use of established religious tradition, popular entertainment and the mediatization of contemporary exorcism cases, institutionalized training curricula and the spaces allowing ritual improvisation, and the vernacular religious consumption of unregulated paranormal concepts that possess no clear analogues within official Church theology.

Of demons and Hollywood: Exorcism in American culture

1998 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael W. Cuneo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Demonic Possession ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
American Society

As the related phenomena of exorcism and deliverance ministry vividly attest, the popular entertainment industry in the United States possesses a tremendous capacity for influencing religious beliefs and behaviours. Since the early 1970s, cinematic and popular literary treatments of demonic possession and affliction have helped create recurrent demands for exorcism within various sectors of American society. This paper examines the peculiar dynamics by which markets for exorcism have been created and sustained by the entertainment industry, and also the various ways in which these markets have been satisfied by religious entrepreneurs within the respective worlds of neo-Pentecostalism, Protestant evangelicalism and Roman Catholicism.

Liberating Afghan Women

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 70-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Afghan Women ◽  
The Media ◽  
Policy Priority

Public opinion in the United States and elsewhere celebrated the liberation of Afghan women following the defeat of the Taliban government. The United States promised to stay in Afghanistan and foster security, economic development, and human rights for all, especially women. After years of funding various anti- Soviet Mujahidin warlords, the United States had agreed to help reconstruct the country once before in 1992, when the Soviet-backed government fell, but had lost interest when the warlords began to fight among themselves. This time, however, it was going to be different. To date, however, conditions have not improved for most Afghan women and reconstruction has barely begun. How did this happen? This article explores media presentations of Afghan women and then compares them with recent reports from human rights organizations and other eyewitness accounts. It argues that the media depictions were built on earlier conceptions of Muslim societies and allowed us to adopt a romantic view that disguised or covered up the more complex historical context of Afghan history and American involvement in it. We allowed ourselves to believe that Afghans were exotic characters who were modernizing or progressing toward a western way of life, despite the temporary setback imposed by the Taliban government. In Afghanistan, however, there was a new trope: the feminist Afghan woman activist. Images of prominent Afghan women sans burqa were much favored by the mass media and American policymakers. The result, however, was not a new focus on funding feminist political organizations or making women’s rights a foreign policy priority; rather, it was an unwillingness to fulfill obligations incurred during decades of American-funded mujahidin warfare, to face the existence of deteriorating conditions for women, resumed opium cultivation, and a resurgent Taliban, or to commit to a multilateral approach that would bring in the funds and expertise needed to sustain a long-term process of reconstruction.

Campaigns and Elections in a Changing Media Landscape

2019 ◽  
pp. 403-426
Author(s):  
Michael X. Delli Carpini ◽  
Bruce A. Williams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Media ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Campaigns And Elections ◽  
The Media

The media landscape of countries across the globe is changing in profound ways that are of relevance to the study and practice of political campaigns and elections. This chapter uses the concept of media regimes to put these changes in historical context and describe the major drivers that lead to a regime’s formation, institutionalization, and dissolution. It then turns to a more detailed examination of the causes and qualities of what is arguably a new media regime that has formed in the United States; the extent to which this phenomenon has or is occurring (albeit in different ways) elsewhere; and how the conduct of campaigns and elections are changing as a result. The chapter concludes with thoughts on the implications of the changing media landscape for the study and practice of campaigns and elections specifically, and democratic politics more generally.

Validation of Institutional Support Survey for Anesthesiology Training Programs in the United States

2006 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin K. Tremper ◽  
Amy Shanks ◽  
Michelle Morris ◽  
Dave A. Burnett
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Training Programs ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
The United States

Book Reviews: Women and Politics in New Zealand, Voters' Vengeance: The 1990 Election in New Zealand and the Fate of the Fourth Labour Government, The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy, The Politics of the Training Market: From Manpower Services Commission to Training and Enterprise Councils, Public Policy and the Nature of the New Right, Managing the United Kingdom: An Introduction to its Political Economy and Public Policy, Citizenship and Employment: Investigating Post-Industrial Options, Government by the Market? The Politics of Public Choice, Responsive Regulation: Transcending the Deregulation Debate, Regulatory Politics in Transition, The Politics of Regulation: A Comparative Perspective, Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War and Revolution since 1945, Welfare States and Working Mothers, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States, Japan and the United States: Global Dimensions of Economic Power, Political Dynamics in Contemporary Japan, Japan's Foreign Policy after the Cold War: Coping with Change, Soviet Studies Guide, Directory of Russian MPs, Mikhail Gorbachev and the End of Soviet Power, Red Sunset: The Failure of Soviet Politics, Six Years that Shook the World: Perestroika — The Impossible Project, The Politics of Transition: Shaping a Post-Soviet Future, Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference, Probabilistic Voting Theory, Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing, Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power

1994 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 717-730
Author(s):  
Preston King ◽  
Marco Cesa ◽  
Martin Rhodes ◽  
Stephen Wilks ◽  
Christopher Tremewan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Political Biography ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Regulatory Politics

scholarly journals Politicizing Religion

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-99
Author(s):  
Uta A. Balbier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Discourses ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter defines Graham’s crusades in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom in the 1950s as powerful cultural orchestrations of Cold War culture. It explores the reasons of leading political figures to support Graham, the media discourses that constructed Graham’s image as a cold warrior, and the religious and political worldviews of the religious organizers of the crusades in London, Washington, New York, and Berlin. In doing so, the chapter shows how hopes for genuine re-Christianization, in response to looming secularization, anticommunist fears, and post–World War II national anxieties, as well as spiritual legitimizations for the Cold War conflict, blended in Graham’s campaign work. These anxieties, hopes, and worldviews crisscrossed the Atlantic, allowing Graham and his campaign teams to make a significant contribution to creating an imagined transnational “spiritual Free World.”

scholarly journals The case for Pacific media reform to reflect island communities

2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-35
Author(s):  
Kalafi Moala
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
San Francisco Bay ◽  
San Francisco Bay Area ◽  
The United States ◽  
Daily News ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
The Us ◽  
Island Communities ◽  
The Media

"The largest number of Tongans outside of Tonga lives in the United States. It is estimated to be more than 70,000; most live in the San Francisco Bay Area. On several occasions during two visits to the US by my wife and I during 2004, we met workers who operate the only daily Tongan language radio programmes in San Francisco. Our organisation supplies the daily news broadcast for their programmes. Our newspapers— in the Tongan and Samoan languages— also sell in the area. The question of what are the fundamental roles of the media came up in one of our discussions..."

In Defense of the Supreme Court Decision in Alvarez-Machain

1992 ◽  
Vol 86 (4) ◽  
pp. 736-746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malvina Halberstam
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
International Law ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Drug Enforcement ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Criminal Suspects ◽  
The Media

In United States v. Alvarez-Machain, the Supreme Court sustained the jurisdiction of a U.S. court to try a Mexican national, charged with various counts of conspiracy, kidnaping and the murder of a U.S. drug enforcement agent in Mexico, even though his presence in the United States was the result of abduction rather than extradition pursuant to the Extradition Treaty between the United States and Mexico. The Court did not hold, as widely reported in the media, that the Treaty permits abduction, that abduction is legal, or that the United States had a right to kidnap criminal suspects abroad. On the contrary, the Court acknowledged that the abduction may have been a violation of international law. It stated, “Respondent and his amici may be correct that respondent’s abduction was ’shocking’ and that it may be in violation of general international law principles.”

Committee on School Health Health Education

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-117
Author(s):  
Donald E. Cook ◽  
Conrad L. Andringa ◽  
Karl W. Hess ◽  
Leonard L. Kishner ◽  
Samuel R. Leavitt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Education ◽  
School Health ◽  
The United States ◽  
Education Programs ◽  
The Public ◽  
School Health Education ◽  
Comprehensive Health ◽  
The Media ◽  
State And Local

The American Academy of Pediatrics believes that it is necessary to reaffirm its support for the concept of school health education, from kindergarten through grade 12, for all schoolchildren in the United States. A basic concept of pediatrics is prevention, and health education is a basic element in the delivery of comprehensive health care. The public is continually bombarded by the media about the high cost of medical care and the overutilization and incorrect use of medical facilities. The media also writes about the problems of increasing promiscuity and illegitimacy; the money wasted on quackery; practices that are detrimental to the health of people in the United States; and the lag in the dissemination of new health information and facts to the public. The Committee on School Health believes that community health education programs, of which school health education programs from kindergarten through grade 12 are an integral part, are one of the most viable methods to help alleviate these and similar problems. Therefore, the Committee on School Health makes the following recommendations and urges action for them at state and local levels. 1. Health education is a basic education subject, and it should be taught as such. Health education is compatible with other traditional subjects and can enhance the contribution that other basic subjects make to general life experience, understanding, and skills. 2. Planned, integrated programs of comprehensive health education should be required for students from kindergarten through grade 12. Instruction should be given by teachers qualified to teach health education.

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