Fotografía de autor
10 Obras 222 Miembros 3 Reseñas

Sobre El Autor

Joseph P. Laycock is Associate Profess or of Religious Studies at Texas State University, USA.

Incluye los nombres: Joseph Laycock, Joseph P. Laycock

Obras de Joseph P. Laycock

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Nombre canónico
Laycock, Joseph P.
Fecha de nacimiento
1980

Miembros

Reseñas

This is a Penguin Classic edition. Penguins are collectors’ items nowadays. Instagram collectors feature them in their posts. They never go out of style since the bindings are well glued together even if the covers become frayed over the years. I have many Penguin editions which I have collected over the years. Penguins used to be used as textbooks for college classes, so they were always around if you wanted to find them. Now Penguin issues new editions with distinctive covers to attract new buyers/collectors. This book is classified under History & Religion. The editor for this book has presented an edition which overall I feel is more specifically steeped in folklore. I will explain.
This is actually a very informative book as it deals which how humans have dealt with paranormal phenomena and ritualistic formulas to recapture a balanced way of life. The word “exorcisms” here in the book title deals with a generalized subject of anything adversely effecting people which is then attended to by another so-called expert who performs a type of ritual for the person beset by said adversity. The book describes varying degrees of success for the exorcists. Many of the cases here take on what we would call a “medical procedure” with an examination, diagnosis, and treatment. In the religious parlance the familiar word “ritual” is used to describe this.
The greatest exorcist of all is Jesus of Nazareth who performed many expulsions of demons. Jesus’ accounts are not listed in this book. The cases of Jesus are so well known that even in the post Christian world they are one of the few things that survive in the popular western imagination.
The issue with the book in my view is that since it is not a Christian publication on Demonology or Christian ritual for those under the influence of malignant spirits it, perhaps intentionally, becomes a catalog of white magic versus black magic. A world where forces of evil become predominate over the forces of good, someone becomes an agent for good to try to arrest the dark forces from spreading their influence. This is not a Christian view of the world and therefore not the purpose of exorcisms in that tradition. This book indirectly brings Christian understandings under the umbrella of incantations to ward off evil sometimes using apparent forces of good but just as easily using any force for evil as well. The schema of the book is to illustrate how someone enters the picture of another’s personal distress to use occult powers to fend off occult influence. This book offers a dualist understanding of spiritual realities. Not helpful per se, but interesting for historical documentation. The chapters proceed chronologically from earliest times to 2012. There are many excellent selections such as from: St Thomas Aquinas, St Athanasius, Erasmus, Josephus, and Report of a Poltergeist which touches on the case which prompted William Peter Blatty to write his novel The Exorcist.
Most people would read this for interest in the paranormal but I read it as an anthology of cases to be evaluated from different religious perspectives. No photos, interesting notes and suggested readings.
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Denunciada
sacredheart25 | May 2, 2022 |
Majority rule with minority rights. Separation of church and state. Religious freedom. All key principles of the United States government. But when the Satanic Temple comes along and tries to put these principles into action, we find that the majority religion in the US doesn't really practice what they preach.

When I saw the documentary about the TST and read articles about them I assumed that they were just some atheists trying to stir things up and make sure that Christians were following the rules. But after reading this book I see that many of them have made a real faith of Satanism. And contrary to popular belief it's not about eating babies and dragging souls down to hell. It's more about respecting individuality and personal freedom.

The story of Satan is nuanced, and many Americans don't have time for details. They'd rather picture a Halloween/horror movie monster than angel who "fell from grace" after fighting a battle he believed in.

Anyway, the book was great if maybe a little repetitive. It really did unveil how minorities in this country get the short end of the stick. The TST had to result to lawsuits to attempt to get the same rights as Christians. Rights that are guaranteed by current laws. If they wanted to say a prayer before a government meeting where Christians usually said a prayer, they were blocked at every turn. New laws were written to prevent them from speaking or sometimes all types of prayer were removed. When Christians wanted to promote their religion in schools the Satanists tried to do the same thing and again, were prevented from it and had to file lawsuits. Etc. etc...

So hopefully they'll keep going and bringing to light this prejudice.
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1 vota
Denunciada
ragwaine | Apr 4, 2022 |
In Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds, Joseph P. Laycock argues, “Much of the energy that evangelicals put into framing fantasy role-playing games as either madness or a heretical religion was actually a defense mechanism to assuage their own doubts. The realization that a game of imagination can resemble a religion naturally leads to the suspicion that one’s religion could likewise be a game of imagination” (pg. 24-25). These evangelicals worked with others in the New Christian Right, law enforcement, and parents groups to act as moral entrepreneurs in the panic. Laycock writes of intergenerational differences, “Fantasy role-playing games were linked to fears of a generation that would rise up and kill its parents. While the imagined forces corrupting young people changed from decade to decade, the subversion narratives were always closely tied to fears of the religious and moral other. In this sense, the history of the panic over fantasy role-playing games is really a history of far darker fantasies that haunted the American psyche” (pg. 6).

Addressing the historical context, Laycock writes, “The panic over cults in the 1970s combined religious fears of the heretical other with medicalized notions of brainwashing and mental illness. This constellation of anxieties formed the context through which critics understood D&D” (pg. 77). later, “In the 1980s, moral entrepreneurs continued to frame their attack on role-playing games in both religious terms as a ‘cult’ and in medicalized terms as a form of brainwashing. But a new claim came to dominate discourse about fantasy role-playing games: that these games were actually designed to promote criminal behavior and suicide because they had been crated by an invisible network of criminal Satanists” (pg. 102). These linked role-playing games with the ongoing Satanic Panic. Groups like Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD) furthered the connection of D&D with murder and suicide (pg. 119).

Examining the Satanic Panic, Laycock writes, “[David] Bromley attempts to make sense of the panic by suggesting that claims about Satanists abducting and abusing children were an attempt to articulate social concerns and frustrations that could not be expressed otherwise. The real threat, he argues, was that a changing economy in which both parents frequently worked required Americans to rely increasingly on strangers to care for and raise their children. The covenantal sphere of family life was being compromised by the contractual sphere of the market, and parents felt helpless to halt this process” (pgs. 106-107). Laycock argues that darker, edgier content from the late 1980s and 1990s sought to provide outlets targeted to Generation X just as D&D had for Baby Boomers. He writes, “For Generation X, dark, atmosphere-heavy role-playing games were not just an escape into a fantasy world: they were a medium through which players and storytellers could explore their doubts and frustrations by creating stories that articulated the world’s flaws by casting them into relief” (pg. 140). This darker context added further fuel to moral entrepreneurs’ fire. Amid fears of superpredators and newspaper articles about privileged, white killers, moral entrepreneurs seized on the tropes of role-playing games to “frame white murders as ‘goths’ or otherwise part of some strange subculture that made them fundamentally different from their white, suburban peers” (pg. 163).

Laycock links the focus on the imaginary with its perceived threat to cultural hegemony. He writes, “In this sense, fantasy role-playing games, along with novels, film, and other imaginary worlds, provide mental agency. Moral entrepreneurs interpreted this agency as subversion and a deliberate attempt to undermine traditional values” (pg. 215). He continues, “To regard the demonic as fantasy casts doubt on all religious truth claims, at least where the supernatural is concerned… This fear, [he argues], is the primary reason why some Christians found fantasy role-playing games so intolerable. If players can construct a shared fantasy complete with gods and demons, what assurance is there that Christianity is not itself a kind of game?” (pg. 233)

Laycock concludes, “Censorship allows authorities to restrict what we say, but controlling the frames of metacommunication allows authorities to restrict the kind of meanings we convey. The panic over fantasy role-playing games and the imagination reflects an attempt to secure hegemony by reordering these frames of meaning” (pgs. 279-280).
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½
 
Denunciada
DarthDeverell | Aug 6, 2018 |

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Estadísticas

Obras
10
Miembros
222
Popularidad
#100,929
Valoración
4.1
Reseñas
3
ISBNs
25

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