Demonization Quotes

“One of the bigger mistakes of our time, I suppose, was preaching the demonization of all judgment without teaching how to judge righteously. We now live in an age where, apart from the inability to bear even good judgment when it so passes by, still everyone, inevitably, has a viral opinion (judgment) about everything and everyone, but little skill in good judgment as its verification or harness.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Do I believe in demonic possession?

My thinking is more aligned with 'demonization' in the context of Christianity & Spirit-filled believers, whereas I am quite certain an 'unbeliever' can possibly become 'possessed' by a demonic spirit('s).”
― R. Alan Woods, The Person of The Holy Spirit: To Empower, Equip, and Enable

“It’s hard to imagine a more squarely on-the-nose example of demonizing mental illness than portraying a mentally ill man as a literal demon.”
― Charles Bramesco

“The concept of good versus evil is a handy construct for framing a narrative. When you see someone applying that concept to real-world events, however, be aware that you're in the presence of a peddler of fiction.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Despite characterizations of ignorance and racism by the Democrats and most of the media, economic and social fortunes have risen in Dixie as well.”
― Steve Travers, CALIFORNIA LIBERALISM IS EXAMPLE OF AMERICAN SPORT’S POLITICAL EFFECT

“The flaws of some people lead to horrors inflicted on to others. And then there are the more human flaws that, when you shine a light on to them, de-demonise people that might otherwise be seen as ogres.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“We need to be looking after young men a bit better before we start demonising them.”
― Matty Healy

“Research for this book has made me aware of aspects of Christianity I find disturbing. During the past several years, rereading the gospels, I was struck by how their vision of supernatural struggle both expresses conflict and raises it to cosmic dimensions. This research, then, reveals certain fault lines in Christian tradition that have allowed for the demonizing of others throughout Christian history—fault lines that go back nearly two thousand years to the origins of the Christian movement. While writing this book I often recalled a saying of Søren Kierkegaard: "An unconscious relationship is more powerful than a conscious one."
For nearly two thousand years, for example, many Christians have taken for granted that Jews killed Jesus and the Romans were merely their reluctant agents, and that this implicates not only the perpetrators but (as Matthew insists) all their progeny in evil. Throughout the centuries, countless Christians listening to the gospels absorbed, along with the quite contrary sayings of Jesus, the association between the forces of evil and Jesus’ Jewish enemies. Whether illiterate or sophisticated, those who heard the gospel stories, or saw them illustrated in their churches, generally assumed both their historical accuracy and their religious validity.
Especially since the nineteenth century, however, increasing numbers of scholars have applied literary and historical analysis to the gospels—the so-called higher criticism. Their critical analysis indicated that the authors of Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source from which to construct their amplified gospels. Many scholars assumed that Mark was the most historically reliable because it was the simplest in style and was written closer to the time of Jesus than the others were. But historical accuracy may not have been the gospel writers’ first consideration. Further analysis demonstrated how passages from the prophetic writings and the psalms of the Hebrew Bible were woven into the gospel narratives. Barnabas Lindars and others suggested that Christian writers often expanded biblical passages into whole episodes that “proved,” to the satisfaction of many believers, that events predicted by the prophets found their fulfillment in Jesus’ coming.”
― Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans and Heretics

“Jesus' followers did not invent the practice of demonizing enemies within their own group. In this respect, as in many others, as we shall see, they drew upon traditions they shared with other first-century Jewish sects. The Essenes, for example, had developed and elaborated images of an evil power they called by many names—Satan, Belial, Beelzebub, Mastema (“hatred”)— precisely to characterize their own struggle against a Jewish majority whom they, for reasons different from those of Jesus’ followers, denounced as apostate. The Essenes never admitted Gentiles to their movement. But the followers of Jesus did— cautiously and provisionally at first, and against the wishes of some members. But as the Christian movement became increasingly Gentile during the second century and later, the identification of Satan primarily with the Jewish enemies of Jesus, borne along in Christian tradition over the centuries, would fuel the fires of anti-Semitism.”
― Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans and Heretics