(Moral Panics and a struggle for control of the means of cultural reproduction among a sample of college students)

An Exaggerated Fear?

There is much evidence recently in the mass media of increasing public fear that the United States has been overrun by covens of violent Satanists, which routinely engage in kidnapping, sexual molestation, and even human sacrifice (particularly of young children). It can be argued that this fear is fueled in part by mass media ever ready for sensationalist material, and in part by moral entrepreneurs (e.g., Hahaner, 1988; Johnson, 1989) both of whom find a ready audience, especially among conservative Christians (Melton, 1986: 76). One symptomatic expression of this phenomenon is a periodic resurfacing of a rumor that "blue-eyed, blond-haired virgins" will be sacrificed by local cults of Devil-worshippers during the Halloween season. In recent years some sociologists (e.g., Roy, 1991; Shupe 1991b; Victor, 1990) have reported identical rumors of this sort in dozens of sites across the United States. They occurred in areas as diverse as New Mexico, Montana, Indiana, Kentucky, New York, and Texas. The following case study, witnessed by one of the authors, will acquaint the reader with more details of the general pattern.

The month of October 1989 was particularly dramatic in one North-Central Texas community. Not content with seeing the onset of Halloween as merely symbolic of a festive day of ghosts and goblins, many of the inhabitants of "Texasville" became convinced that they were about to be overwhelmed by a wave of Satanic cult activities. The local media (newspaper and radio) devoted considerable coverage to allegation that such activities were indeed underway in the area. Potential Satanic skullduggery was front-page news for several weeks in Texasville (even the large city papers began following the story). Satanists, it was rumored, were planning the abduction, or even the sacrifice, of blond-haired, blue-eyed children in Texasville several days prior to Halloween. At one junior high school, some children were rumored to have received black roses from cult members as a sign that they had been chosen for abduction. Anyone who wore black clothes was inviting the label of potential or actual Satanist.

There were reports of "Satanic" adolescents recruiting new members at various local high schools. Several teachers claimed to have been harassed by an ever increasing number of adolescent cult members who were allegedly involved in Satanic crimes.1 It was rumored that many mothers were going to keep their children home from school on the day the alleged abductions were to occur. Rumors of animal sacrifices and graveyard atrocities circulated freely.

In response to this tense situation, a public forum was held on October 12 at the Civic Center of the county seat in this North Texas county. Approximately 400 people (including one of us) turned out to attend this forum, which was "standing- room only." (The population of the county seat is about 22,100 persons).

Four guest speakers appeared at the forum: the county sheriff, the sheriff of an adjoining county, a psychologist from the Ft. Worth Care Unit Hospital, and a representative of Lyndon LaRouche's organization. (LaRouche, it will be remembered, is a conservative politician and ex-presidential candidate who is currently languishing in Federal prison on charges of fraud.)

The only speaker who tried to calm those in attendance was the local county sheriff. He reported that all investigations of Satanic occult activities had turned up no evidence of such activities. Furthermore, he added, no one had been arrested or even charged with being involved in such activities. The other speakers at this forum, however, proclaimed the danger of Satanism to be imminent.

At one point during the forum, the one of us in attendance overheard several terrified teenage girls telephoning their parents and requesting that they pick them up because they were afraid to leave the building unaccompanied by an adult. The girls were in attendance (as were many other adolescents) because many teachers in the city had suggested to their students that they should attend the forum. Some schools even distributed handbills announcing the forum to students (including elementary schools _ a third grade child provided us with such a handbill).

If all the allegations by the "anti-Satanists" could be substantiated, North Americans would have a grievous problem indeed. There is, however, a growing body of research by social scientists (see Richardson, Best, and Bromley, 1991, for one of the largest and best compilations of such research; also see Shupe, 1991a; Victor, 1991, 1990; Damphousse and Crouch 1992), which casts grievous doubt on most of these claims. In addition, law enforcement officials (Hicks, 1991, 1990, 1989; Lanning, 1989), and journalists (Lyons, 1988) have strongly indicated that such fears about widespread, pernicious, organized Satanic activities are largely unfounded. Carlson and Larue (1989: 5-6) have concluded that, "When the evidence is considered in total, the conclusion is obvious: Neither Satanism nor Devil-worship is a threat to our society." While no one can prove conclusively that Satanic crimes have not occurred, and we would certainly not condone even a single instance, the Satanic crime threat appears grossly exaggerated and empirically unsupported.

The Etiology of a Moral Panic

Inasmuch as there is little scientific evidence supporting the existence of extensive Satanic cult activities, why then do so many people think otherwise? More specifically, are there certain social characteristics that make some individuals fertile ground for the acceptance of the "factuality" of the Satanism rumors? Theologically, conservative Christianity, with its preoccupation with Beelzebub, has been suggested as a bearer of much of the responsibility for the continued existence of fears about Satanism in North America (Melton, 1986: 76). Indeed, Balch and Gilliam (1991) in an in-depth study of rumor distribution and contagion in one Montana city, found that fundamentalists were the most likely to believe, and to pass on, rumors about alleged Satanic activity. However, in another study (of North American teenagers) religion was not consistently related to "having friends" involved in Satanic activities (Swatos, 1992: 165).

The Struggle to Control the Means of Cultural Reproduction

Much of the fear of organized Satanism can be explained by existing concepts of collective behavior. Particularly relevant is the notion of "moral panics." Cohen (1972: 9) suggested that moral panics occur when:

A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests: Its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians, and other right-thinking people; [and] socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions . . .

It has also been noted that moral panics often have their flames fanned vigorously by what Becker (1973) has termed "moral entrepreneurs." Moral entrepreneurs are often persons engaged in labeling what they perceive as various forms of wrongdoing. These entrepreneurs seek to promulgate their ideas among members of the society most likely to sympathize with their cause in order to get a norm or belief instituted in that society.

It is a truism that groups and subcultures often form their own moral values, personal interests, and/or world views. These groups often end by competing with one another for the implementation and enforcement of their own particular norms by the social control agencies (i.e., police agencies, religious institutions, and schools). This competition results in power conflicts regarding just whose set of norms or whose world view will ultimately prevail (Vold 1958: 279- 80). Moral crusaders have not always resisted the temptation to instigate moral panics in an effort to draw public attention to specific behaviors that they view as deviant. By stigmatizing the actors, they hope to reshape moral boundaries more to their own liking, and in some cases to profit financially from such a redefinition. Through moral panics, such entrepreneurs seek legislation and other social control measures to further define the moral boundaries and ensure the dominance of their own particular world view (Ben-Yehuda 1990, Goode 1989, Schur 1980, Shupe and Bromley 1980, Cohen 1972, and Gusfield 1963).

Carlson and Larue (1989: 143-154) provide a long list of contemporary "moral entrepreneurs" operating in the area of the Satanism issue. They range from media and political interest groups (e.g., the LaRouche organization and Geraldo Rivera), to multitudes of conservative Christians, and even to police officials and consultants. A number of these individuals travel about giving seminars to community organizations, local churches, and law enforcement agencies in an attempt to convince their audiences of an imminent Satanic threat (Carlson and Larue 1989; Hicks 1989, 1990; Lanning 1989; Alexander 1990; Shupe 1990; Victor 1991).

At the Civic Center forum described earlier we found representatives of the Republican Women's Association, an adjoining county's sheriff's office, and a representative of the LaRouche organization. LaRouche's organization is intimately connected to the Federalist Press, which has produced a series of anti-Satanist materials. One of these publications, "Is Satan in Your Schoolyard?" (1989), was distributed freely at the meeting. The magazine claimed that the First Episcopal Church of New York was the home of the Satanist conspiracy in the United States, their Bishop was their leader and Dungeons & Dragons, rock music, and Wagner's operas were some of their "tools" used to corrupt the youth of America. All these individuals  expounded the position that the only way to deal with the alleged Satanic threat was to turn back to conservative Christianity and to create more church involvement among young people. Their intent seemed to be to create a generalized belief in the county, which asserts the existence of widespread moral deterioration in American society, resulting in the pervasiveness of Satanic occult activities.

Moreover, the moral panic over Satanism is an example of what Page and Clelland (1978: 347) define as "the politics of lifestyle concern," that is, the "attempt to defend a way of life." In such an effort, individuals (whether part of a mass public or an organized social movement) are locked in a struggle to control the means of socialization of their offspring (and hence the cultural reproduction of their group's values and world view). In order to propagate a certain lifestyle and world view, one must have at least some control over the institutions of socialization and social control. Thus, the "struggle" occurs in classrooms, courtrooms, and the legislatures _ precisely the same institutions that "sanctify" which norms and values are "correct." The loss of this control reduces any group's ability to transmit the values and moral codes that govern member's sense of normative human existence. Thus, encroachments on these morals or values _ or even perceived encroachments _ become attacks on their lifestyle. And certain issues, like Satanism, become symbolic strains sensed to be undermining valued, traditional society.

The Satanism scare appears to have a fundamental similarity with other episodes of collective behavior and lifestyle defense, such as antipornography campaigns (Zurcher, et al., 1972), textbook content controversies (Page and Clelland, 1978), and the creation/evolution debate (Eve and Harrold, 1991). It can be hypothesized here that the explanatory importance of the politics of lifestyle concern is as influential as is religious conservatism in the generation of moral panics over Satanism. At the heart of the Satanist moral panic may be the desire among many conservative Christians to preserve or promote conservative Christianity in public life; thus, defending or revitalizing a lifestyle based on conservative Christian values, which is perceived to be under attack or decaying in society today.

Specifically, then we hypothesize:

  1. The more religiously conservative individuals' attitudes, the greater the probability that those individuals will feel threatened by Satanism.
  2. Respondent's fears of Satanism will be positively associated with  religious conservatism but even more strongly associated with their respective levels of concern for the protection of conservative Christian values and world view.

END NOTES

  1. A recent study by Damphousse and Crouch (1992) of youths incarcerated by the Texas Youth Commission during a six month period in 1989 found that less than 10% of all delinquents admitted to the state reception center had been involved in Satanic rituals. Moreover, they report that there was no statistically significant difference in the level of delinquency between "Satanists" and "non-Satanists."

Lonnie Roy is with The University of North Texas. Raymond Eve is a professor with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at The University of Texas at Arlington and is a technical advisor for the NTS. Anson Shupe is with Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne, IN. Address all correspondence to Raymond A. Eve, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The University of Texas at Arlington, Texas 76019.