Post by Watchman on Jun 16, 2006 9:52:59 GMT -5
Satan worship was introduced into Finland by concerned evangelical Christians
By Ville Similä
It took the Eurovision Song Contest and one church to bring Satan back.
Hardly had the flames of Porvoo Cathedral gone out when the question was already in the tabloid headlines.
Were the church burners Satan worshippers?
Is Lordi a Satan worshipper?
Is Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen a Satan worshipper?
What do we really know about Satan worship?
If the ordinary person knows anything about it, it is that Satanism is different from Satan worship. Satanism is a "philosophical school of thought", while Satan worship involves a belief in personified evil - a Satan, who lives in Hell.
This famous distinction was made by Harri Heino of the [Lutheran] Church Research Institute in 1992.
The distinction is not known abroad, but it has completely saturated Finnish debate on the issue.
In a doctoral thesis entitled Pimeän hehku ("Glow of Darkness") (2006) researcher Merja Hermonen interviewed 36 people who called themselves either Satanists or Satan worshippers.. She describes the distinctions made by the young people as "stereotypical, but not completely without a foundation in truth".
Heino's distinction began to fulfil itself in the 1990s.
"At least I could not figure out the difference between Satanism and Satan worship very well. I cannot accept everything in Satanism, but that which I can accept feels good", said one 23-year-old woman to Hermonen.
There are organised "Satanic" religious denominations in the world, the most famous of which is the Church of Satan, founded on the first of May, 1966, by Anton LaVey (1930-1997).
However, these legal and open organisations are a far cry from the practitioners of human sacrifice that are familiar from movies.
The distinction meant that it was conveniently easy to shake off the confusion stemming from the fact that Finns who publicly declared themselves to be Satanists were actually quite agreeable people. For instance, rock star Kauko Röyhkä "rejected human sacrifice".
Logical conclusion: somewhere there is a Satan worshipper sacrificing human beings - possibly at this very moment.
Organised Satanic criminal groups have yet to be found. Even the arson attacks against churches in Norway, which caused a major uproar, were copycat crimes committed by a small group of people. They ended when the young perpetrators were given prison sentences and ordered to pay millions in damages.
Satan worship was brought to Finland by evangelical revivalist Christians.
Christian publishing houses published their first books in the early 1990s, and throughout the decade, the debate was dominated by evangelical "experts".
In his doctoral thesis entitled Saatananpalvonta, media, ja yhteiskunta ("Satan Worship, the Media, and Society") published in 2005, researcher Titus Hjelm says that the work which had the greatest impact on the Satan worship phenomenon was a video called Saatana kutsuu minua ("Satan Calls to Me"), produced by the audiovisual department of the Information Centre of the Finnish Lutheran Church in 1992.
The video was shown to teenagers at Finnish schools and at confirmation camps. The video brought the concepts of "being hooked" and "getting caught", which are so familiar from the use of drugs, and they showed how Satan worshippers would cut and scar themselves.
Another concept borrowed from the drug debate was the gateway theory.
According to evangelist Riko Rinne, kids are seduced into the Satanic world by role-playing games, the computer game Doom, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. However, even Noitien kirja ("Witches' Book"), a children's book by Maikki Harjanne, belongs in the same category!
The famous "former Satan worshipper" Päivi Niemi says that she started her worship on the basis of a book by Eric Maple in which the occult was handled in a ghost-story-like manner.
The story of Aki Jääskeläinen, another "former Satan worshipper", is very revealing of the credibility of the whole bunch. Jääskeläinen claims to have taken part in the ritual murder of a baby girl in Sweden. The story, which is written in a book by Riku Rinne, published in 1994, would be implausible even in a Gothic horror novel.
Why didn't Jääskeläinen turn the murderer in? "Aki was taken there blindfolded", Rinne says.
Jääskeläinen's story is Rinne's only source, and the case has not come up in any crime history.
Rinne, Niemi, and Jääskeläinen have toured Finnish schools talking about Satan worship, as has special education teacher Keijo Ahorinta, who has often been portrayed as a leading Finnish expert in the field.
Ahorinta reveals his method in his "textbook" Saatananpalvonnan monet kasvot ("The Many Faces of Satan Worship",1997): "The topic is to be approached with one's feet firmly planted on the ground, preferably with a firm foothold in the truth of The Bible."
Aki Jääskeläinen claims to have a closer relationship with Satan. Satan has visited him having a cigarette on the balcony of his apartment, and doing his business in his toilet.
Chilling stories started coming out in the United States in the mid-1980s.
Middle-aged women had been forced as children to take part in gruesome rituals of abuse. They had pushed the events into their subconscious, but were able to bring them back to their conscious memory with the help of therapy.
There were dozens of such cases, and the FBI began to investigate them.
The FBI's sex crime investigator Kenneth Lanning published his famous reports on the matter in 1989 and 1992.
By that time, numerous court cases had been taken place. In one case, the entire personnel of a day care centre was charged.
Lanning's results were shocking to read: there was no truth to any one of the cases.
Lanning's report ascribed the cases to false memory syndrome, which refers to situations in which a hypnotherapist unintentionally creates memories and implants them in the minds of their patients.
The cases lead back to a book by Canadian psychologist Lawrence Pazder, Michelle Remembers (1980). Pazder tried to help his patient remember how a Satanic cult abused her in the 1950s. Michelle's memories later proved to be false.
But what about the burned churches and toppled tombstones?
Merja Hermonen investigated all crimes committed in 76 municipalities in which Satan worship was a suspected motive.
The most common act was violence committed in a cemetery. The perpetrators were usually boys aged 18. One third of the cases involved girls between the ages of 14 and 17.
There were indications of Satan worship in 23 percent of the reported cases. Intoxicants were involved in almost all of them. Usually the vandalism took place on the spur of the moment.
The Satanism issue peaked with the Hyvinkää landfill murder of 1998. The perpetrators were a group of young black-metal fans, giving life to rumours of ritual murder.
The killers themselves denied that any ritual was involved. The court records have been sealed for 40 years, but what is certain is that the murders took place after several days of drinking home-brewed alcohol.
Were the perpetrators defined by mixed use of intoxicants, social marginalisation, or Satan worship?
Both Hermonen and Hjelm concluded that Satan worship was primarily a juvenile, and not a religious phenomenon.
Is the toppling of tombstones Satan worship, or simple hooliganism?
And is it a little bit too easy to blame the problems of youth on Satan?
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 9.6.2006 in the Nyt weekly supplement.
Helsingin Sanomat