Twelve clergy in full regalia surrounded by women and men toting candles, crosses, icons in their hands and simple faith or curiosity in their hearts faced the federal building in Portland, Oregon on an uncannily bright and warm November morning.  As baffled media and police watched and photographed, we invoked the Trinity, read scripture, sang "A Mighty Fortress is Our God", and then began a prayer of deliverance for the Executive Branch of our federal government from a long list of spirits, headed by the spirit of war.  A determined spray of holy water and a loud amen from the assembly punctuated each prayer.  Following the service, the whole group processed around the building behind priests waving thuribles of fragrant myrrh and frankincense, pausing to pray the Lord's Prayer at each corner.  The ceremony closed with enthusiastic singing of "Joy to the World" and a jubilant trumpet blast.  


How did this come about?  Earlier in the month, six pastors representing five denominations gathered at the campus ministry house of Portland State University for some biblical and theological study.  We had been
running into each other at various peace marches, lobbying efforts and interfaith services and were asking ourselves, "What more can Christians bring to the peace table?"  The purpose of our meeting was to discuss and plan what George McClain, former director of the Methodist Federation for Social Action calls a "social exorcism" to support the peace movement. Though it was my idea, there was no way I was going to undertake this alone. We made sure we recruited at least eight faithful members of the body of Christ to ground our ambitious prayers.

We could not begin to plan such an event, however, until there was some common understanding of what we
were doing.  No one who is not convinced that every nation, tribe, church, or other grouping is organized around an invisible, spiritual beingness, called (in a significant secondary biblical use of the term) an "angel" would even consider attempting this form of prayer.  We had all read Walter Wink on the "powers and principalities" and were inspired by his brilliant discussion of the angels of the churches in the book of Revelation and their need to be set right.  From our own experience we knew that our congregations manifested the strong traits of a collective "personality" that entrained the personalities of individual members for good or ill.  It isn't much of a leap to see that an intractable problem in any institution might be caused or worsened by distortion at an inner, constitutional level of such a collective "personality."

While the Bible calls such distortions "demons," moderns might recognize them as negative institutional habits or culture, pathological patterns, energy fields, memes, mass delusions, addictive behaviors, groupthink or other such meta-phenomena of organizations which have long been observed and described by psychologists and sociologists.  However one names such collective spiritual afflictions, the biblical remedy is prayer.  As Wink writes in The Powers That Be: 

". . . prayer that acknowledges the Powers becomes an indispensable aspect of social action.  We must discern not only the outer, political manifestations of the Powers, but also their inner spirituality, and lift the Powers, inner and outer, to God for transformation.  Otherwise, we change only the shell and leave the spirit intact."  (p. 197)

Following Wink, McClain traces this seemingly novel Christian ritual to Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers in the Temple, which he calls a "social exorcism with broad social implications. There are situations in which it is clear that institutions serve either God or the Great Deceiver. Jesus' action confirms the appropriateness of social exorcism by those of us called to continue his ministry to the principalities and powers."  (Claiming All Things for God, p. 116)

Convinced that we might be recovering an ancient remedy for a newly-recognized problem, we sifted the New Testament for guidance. Christ is unequivocally the ruler of all created powers in heaven and earth. (Colossians 1:16)  One of the first and easiest decisions we made was that the social exorcism we were planning would not be an interfaith service, as we knew that our prayers would be in the name of Christ. The public was invited to look on, for we understood our witness to also be an act of evangelism. In the interest of good interfaith relations, other interested spiritual communities were welcomed to pray alongside as they wished. 

The more deeply we studied, the more it seemed that exorcism is a powerful Christian vocation abandoned by the Protestant church since the time of the Reformation.  In Luke 9:1-2, Jesus gives the twelve authority over demons and sends them out to preach and heal. Facing the mighty Roman Empire, the  believers boldly prayed for God to heal and an earthquake answered. (Acts 4:29-31)  Ephesians expects that "through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places." (3:10) I don't know about anyone else, but my seminary training equipped me to preach but not to heal, let alone do exorcisms. 



It was through my interest in healing that I first encountered phenomena that seemed to call for deliverance prayer in the name of Christ.  I learned that many systems of spiritual or energy healing - not all of them Christian - recognize a need for cleansing of negative energies or entities that might infest or infect a person. Indeed the growing interest in the Pentecostal and evangelical wing of Christianity in "spiritual warfare" is partly fueled by the encounter with indigenous religions on the mission field which were never inside a Western rational worldview and
freely traffic in the spirit world or astral plane with sometimes dire consequences.  Wink makes an interesting point in this regard:

"Is my understanding of prayer similar to the 'spiritual warfare' practiced by some evangelicals or charismatics? Yes, to the extent that I agree that prayer should be imperative and aggressive. We should be engaged to alter the spirituality of families, corporations and nations. . .I differ, however, in my understanding of the demonic.  I do not believe that evil angels seize human institutions and pervert them. . . . Therefore, I would not attempt to cast out the spirit of a city, for example, but rather to call upon God to transform it, to recall it to its divine vocation.  My spiritual conversation is with God, not the demonic."  (The Powers That Be, p. 197)

It seemed to us that fixation upon Satan and Jesus-style commanding of demons might not be the best theological or psychological modeling.  Who among us is strong enough to contend directly with the prince
of this world and not get caught in the loop? Nor is such a risk necessary, for a prayer of faith that calls in Christ and his angels and is spoken in his name is perfectly sufficient.  

More than one of the pastors questioned the need to use the word "exorcism" with its connotations of medieval misunderstanding and sensationalized movie scenes.  It is a strong word, which in the Greek literally means a "strong word" or oath.  Yet "social exorcism" is the current term for what we were proposing. And serious evil does call for a strong word. After some debate, the group agreed to risk being mocked or misunderstood and to focus on our own sincere intent to pray as Jesus taught us for deliverance from evil using the term exorcism for its attention-getting value, if nothing else.  We were clear that we had engaged ourselves in the double purpose to pray with faith and power and to do so as publicly as possible.  Our idea was to take our spirituality into the streets in both a prayerful and a public witness. Hence the liturgical art and furnishings usually confined to our sanctuaries were carried into the plaza across from the federal building where we convened.  We even handed out bulletins with an order of service.  

In his rite of social exorcism, George McClain suggests that those gathered take time to orient themselves to the ritual and its presuppositions.  We followed his advice carefully and met together three times to plan and carry out a full-length private worship service including the sacrament of Holy Communion before finalizing our plans for the public exorcism.  In that preparatory worship, we used the breastplate prayer of St. Patrick and "put on the
whole armor of God" as urged in Ephesians 6.  One among us who had thoroughly researched the intended beneficiary of our prayers, the Executive Branch, took time to describe the scope of that institution and its
overall pressing problem, i.e., a headlong rush to empire through arrogating the right to attack another
nation.  We then spent 20 minutes in centering prayer and silence, asking for discernment to label the particular spirits needing to be released.  Another of our number then began the prayers of deliverance with these words:

"We perceive that there are influences and spirits which have strayed from the ways of God and which are preying on the Executive Branch of our government. They deceive as they have been deceived; they accept what is false and lead others to accept falsehood as well.  War, greed, mass consumption, destruction of life and the excuse that 'I'm just doing my job' are all symptoms of a deeper deception influenced by these deadened spirits.  Those who are held captive by these spirits are largely ignorant of their influence.  We therefore pray for their release and for Gods healing power to return them to full life."

Ephesians recognizes "our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." (6:12)  None of us wished to fall into the same trap of demonizing individuals or nations that has caused our own current administration to stumble.  Neither did we self-righteously presume we were above the need for
cleansing and healing.  The exorcism formula we used was:  "God, deliver the Executive Branch and all of us
from the spirit of (war, fear, greed, etc) in the name and power of Jesus Christ.  We pray that this spirit may depart and that (peace, love, generosity) may return."

This formula was also carefully constructed to avoid the problem of leaving a vacuum for spirits to re-grow or return by filling the place of the cleansed vice with its opposite virtue. We believe our prayers were truly an act of love, invoking the power of God to cleanse, heal and restore our government to its right
mind.   As we said in our introduction at the federal building:
 
"We the people are gathered here to pray for a radical change in the spiritual condition of our federal government.  The Christian clergy who have organized this service hold the biblical belief that every nation, tribe, and organization maintains a collective reality or angel, which may become oppressed or distorted by negative patterns or powers from without or within.  We believe that our own government, particularly the Executive Branch, is in the grip of certain mass delusions and addictions interfering with rational purpose and choice as it steamrolls towards invading Iraq.  We believe that the radical remedy for illness at this level is prayer for deliverance from evil.  We welcome all who are here to pray with us or stand in silent solidarity with the intended outcome of our prayers: the cleansing, healing and renewal of purpose of our government that it be of the people, by the people, and for the people, with liberty and justice for all."

Did it make any difference?  The Executive Branch of the federal government is very large and it would be impossible for anyone to know all particular effects. Yet within hours of our first service, we heard that the lame duck Congress has dealt a sudden and surprising blow to the administration by voting down the so-called "Bankruptcy Reform Act", an Orwellian piece of legislation much favored by the banks and easily expected to pass.  Sixty-five Republicans unexpectedly broke ranks and voted with the opposition.  Did our prayer to cast out the spirit of greed make it more difficult for the administration to pressure another branch of government to conform to a greedy agenda?  

We do know that an ecumenical group of pastors were emboldened to do something we had never done before,
to make a public witness to our faith that "Christ rules the world with truth and grace." Since then, some of us have gone on to plan social exorcisms of media organizations, the School of the Americas, and a special Christmas Eve prayer for the cleansing and healing of the angels of the nations of Israel and Palestine.  We hope that our story will inspire others to reclaim this powerful form of prayer, for the need is very great and the possible beneficiaries nearly endless. The Spirit and the gifts are ours.