Posted by:
Elder Berry
(
)
Date: May 12, 2020 02:21PM
"In 1977,then-church historian Leonard Arrington attended a dinner for a handful of people in Salt Lake City. Present at the dinner, and slated to address the group, was a man named M. Russell Ballard. Ballard had recently returned from serving as a mission president in Toronto, Canada, and had since been called as a general authority of the LDS church. Ballard’s remarks that evening focused on an experience he had while a mission president in which he performed an exorcism.72According to Ballard, a woman who lived within the mission boundaries began to exhibit “signs of possession” during a group trip to the LDS temple in Washington, D.C. She was behaving strangely on the trip down but was perfectly fine within the temple only to resume her behavior once she got out. Ballard eventually heard about this case from the missionaries who had been visiting the woman and trying to cast out whatever evil presence had possessed her, and he decided to visit her himself. When he arrived, even before he entered the house, the woman shouted, “Don’t let that man in, don’t let that man in!” This is an example of what Cuneo calls the “hero-priest” phenomenon. In The Exorcist, the demon that is possessing the young girl both fears and longs to fight with a specific priest. When that priest arrives at the house where the possessed girl lives, the demon cries out the priest’s name in a tone of both agony and expectation, and, as Cuneo describes it, the presence of the heroic priest yields “an almost palpable sense of relief and gratitude.”73In the Ballard case, the possessed woman behaves in a remarkably similar fashion. The possessed woman recognizes that this particular individual is to be feared far more than any of the other priestly functionaries who had been involved up to this point. Additionally ,she announces that fact in a loud voice just as Ballard arrives. This is very close to the scene portrayed in The Exorcist. I do not believe that Ballard ever read or saw The Exorcist. It is entirely possible, however, that the possessed woman had seen the film and was using it, as so many others did during this time frame, as the accepted typology for possession. Despite the demonic objection, Ballard entered the home and “saw a face that was contorted in such a way that she was82 Religion and American Culture unrecognizable. She spoke with a completely different voice than her regular voice, a deep voice. She spoke in a different manner than she had ever been known to do previous to these attacks.” Ballard accepted these signs as genuine. He instructed the woman’s Stake President to lay his hands on her once again. This blessing, unlike the ones per-formed by the missionaries, did have some impact. Ballard, who had by this point identified the possessing spirit as Satan himself, claimed to feel Satan leave the woman but remain in the room. Soon, however, the Devil returned and again took possession of the woman. At this point, Ballard took over the exorcism himself. He laid his hands on the woman’s head and carried on a “dialogue” with the Devil for twenty to thirty minutes before eventually casting him out for good, “not only from the body of the woman but from the room completely.” After telling this dramatic story, Ballard offered his interpretation of the events. The Devil possessing the woman had not wanted Ballard to enter the home because Ballard “was the ultimate Church authority in the region.” This was also the reason that “the Stake President was not able to use his authority to banish the demon” completely. Ballard thus saw the entire encounter as one not of priest-hood authority (because all of the men holding the Melchizedek priesthood have the same authority) but of Satan’s respect for hierarchical bureaucracy. At various levels of ecclesiastical administrative authority, the Devil seemed to respond differently. He apparently could ignore the missionaries completely, but he had to respond in a limited way to the adjurations of the Stake President. Only Ballard, “the ultimate authority in the region,” however, could command Satan to leave permanently."
https://www.academia.edu/31631773/_Satan_Mourns_Naked_Upon_the_Earth_Locating_Mormon_Possession_and_Exorcism_Rituals_in_the_American_Religious_Landscape_1830-1977_Religion_and_American_Culture_a_Journal_of_Interpretation_27_1_Winter_2017_