From the founding fathers to the rise of Christian nationalism, Devils of Democracy
reveals how America's centuries-long obsession with evil has shaped--and endangered--our democracy.
Americans love political demons. From the Revolutionary War to today, in fact, America has been steeped in the demonic and the devilish. Demons populate the spaces of American daily life in ways we might be inclined to dismiss, and they exert a power and a hold over our political imaginations that is, arguably, downright diabolical. Yet as strange as our collective obsession with the interaction between demons and politics might seem, this deep-rooted fascination is a meaningful part of our culture and communities, our history and heritage, our religion and recreation, the personal and the political.
And it may be precisely this obsession that has led us to our present-day political crisis.
While we may be tempted to turn our attention away from the discomfort of demons, author Michael E. Heyes challenges us to a clear-eyed reckoning that requires us to do the opposite. Arguing that we live in a nation that could not exist in its present form without the demonic beliefs that built it, he invites every one of us to join him in confronting spiritual-political demonization in the US head-on, starting with the frightening political point currently confronting our nation, then circling back in time to explore and illuminate the role of demons in US politics throughout our history, drawing connections along the way to our present Trump-era moment and building to the current disturbing demonization of democratic people and institutions, as performed by some groups in the powerful Christian right.
As a country, we need to find our way out of this mess, and an important first step is looking at how we got here. If we are to forge a new path forward, we have no choice but to deal with our demons.
PRaise for Devils of Democracy
“With a deep dive into American history, literature, and popular culture extending back into the eighteenth century, Michael E. Heyes finds that Americans’ abiding fixation with demons, especially when mixed with apocalypticism and seasoned by misogyny, created a witches’ brew that has fed conspiracy movements from QAnon to the Dominionism that animates the New Apostolic Reformation—and even helps to explain the domestic terrorist attack of January 6, 2021. Thoroughly researched and carefully argued, Devils of Democracy deserves serious attention.”
—Randall Balmer, John Phillips Professor in Religion, Dartmouth College, and author of Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right
“This fascinating book lays out in great detail and digestible narrative the intertwined political and religious history of demons, spirits, and the like in America. From the papal and royal antichrists in the Revolutionary Era, to demons who offered all types of freedom to females in the 1800s, to the origins of the vibes of the Ouija board, to the call for Christian dominion in the twenty-first century, this book is a tour de force of forces from another world. I was skeptical that I would learn anything new from this book: Demons seem a well-covered subject. But I was converted when page after page of letters, sermons, editorials, and a dash of scholarly citations seemed to take over my mind. Entranced, I read it almost in one sitting. In that second reading, I discovered the most important part of the book: how all these spirits matter today. As Heyes makes clear, all this history currently impacts our nation because we just can’t seem to shake the demons from democracy.”
—Matthew Boedy, author of The Seven Mountains Mandate: Exposing the Dangerous Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy
“Michael E. Heyes has written the definitive guide to a dark and often misunderstood corner of the American psyche. As one of the foremost experts on demonology in the United States, Heyes demonstrates that demons have always been more than just monsters in stories; they are mirrors of our deepest cultural fears. By tracing this obsession from its biblical origins in Genesis to the modern political stage, Heyes reveals how supernatural beliefs now provide the framework for social warfare. This is an urgent and necessary look at how labeling an opponent ‘demonic’ changes the rules of engagement and makes democratic compromise nearly impossible. Devils of Democracy is a must-read for all who wish to understand the religious logic driving today’s headlines.”
—André Gagné, full professor at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and author of American Evangelicals for Trump: Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times
“Devils of Democracy is frighteningly relevant for our current political moment. Heyes offers haunting insight into America’s centuries-long project of demonizing religious, racial, and sexual outsiders—showing the real monsters among us are (and always have been) those most determined to undermine the nation’s commitment to individual liberty and religious freedom.”
—Dr. Megan Goodwin, senior editor at Religion Dispatches, nerd-in-chief of Feral Nerd Consulting, cohost of the Keeping It 101 podcast, and coauthor of Religion Is Not Done with You
“In this bracing and historically grounded book, Heyes traces the long history of Christian demonology, revealing how an ancient theology has come to shape today’s volatile political climate. By grounding today’s spiritual warfare in its deep theological past, he asks a vital question: If demons are not going away, what does their resurgence mean for American democracy?”
—Elle Hardy, author of Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World
“Devils of Democracy reveals how, for millions of voters, the ballot box has become a front line for ‘strategic-level spiritual warfare,’ transforming political opponents into cosmic enemies whose defeat is imagined as reclaiming dominion over the earth. Michael E. Heyes traces the democratization of spiritual warfare that first empowered individual believers to battle personal demons, then expanded their moral anxieties into a global political theology in which ‘territorial spirits’ govern nations and shape world events. As a sociological autopsy of the American electorate, he shows how demonology operates as a form of social control by recasting progressive movements as supernatural threats and framing political compromise as a kind of sin. The result is a modern demonology that erodes democratic empathy, encourages citizens to view neighbors as monsters rather than partners in a shared civic life, and furnishes a powerful rationale for political violence. In the end, the devil takes shape not in distant fantasies of hell, but in the everyday suspicions that turn fellow Americans into evildoers who must be destroyed.”
—Gerardo Martí, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology at Davidson College and author of American Blindspot: Race, Class, Religion, and the Trump Presidency
“Michael E. Heyes’s Devils of Democracy exposes a simultaneously fascinating and sobering history of the rhetorical use of demons and demonization in American political discourse and action. Appeals to the end times and to demon possession in periods of crisis as part of an effort to vilify the political other and to dial the stakes up to eleven are not unique to the United States, but good grief, do we seem to have a particular penchant for it. Heyes shows that from the witch trials to the Satanic Panic to the Seven Mountains Mandate, and down to today, the gravitational pull of the demonic has a way with the tide of American history. Most sobering of all, Heyes demonstrates that thoughtful folks concerned for the nation’s future ought to start taking far more seriously the influence of conspiratorial demonology.”
—Dan McClellan, author of the New York Times bestselling book The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues
“When Michael E. Heyes writes, ‘We are cosmic warriors fighting on the side of God himself; we’ve been chosen by the Almighty to combat the demonic threat,’ he captures the theology of ‘demonic warfare’ that defined my childhood. As the son of world-famous American evangelical leaders Francis and Edith Schaeffer, I was taught that we were God’s chosen people on Earth, charged with fighting Satan, his demons, and their human servants—namely, anyone who did not share our beliefs. To take part in this eternal cosmic struggle, we had to believe that our true enemies were demonic forces. Consequently, those who disagreed with our political or cultural views were not merely wrong—they were evil. Our opponents were deemed undeserving of empathy, kindness, or even fact-based understanding, no more than the demons they were said to serve.“As the Religious Right—an entity my family helped to shape in the 1970s and ’80s—rose to power in the Trump era, it unleashed the merciless certainties that now define the Christian nationalist movement. Heyes exposes this history, revealing how the extremist delusion of ‘spiritual warfare’ has become a profound threat to American civility, tolerance, and neighborliness. Anyone who seeks to understand the current state of the United States—and to rescue it from delusion and conspiracy-fed lies—must urgently read Devils of Democracy.”
—Frank Schaeffer, author of The Gospel of Zip and Crazy for God
“This is the ideal book for anyone puzzled by the sudden surge in talk about angels, demons, and spiritual warfare in our politics. Heyes
ably demonstrates that the American religious imagination has always tended toward the lurid and apocalyptic. While openly agnostic about the existence of actual demons, Devils of Democracy offers a valuable (and alarming) history of the role of demonizing in American rhetoric and politics.”
