Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Thorough. Brilliant writing. The parallels to our current cultural moment were articulated so well.

Yet another great podcast from Mike Cosper and his team. What they put together is incredibly informative and timely. As someone who grew up in the 70s and 80s, this series corrected a lot of misinformation that affected what I believe and how I believe it. Thank you. Can’t wait for what comes next.

Fascinating and well-done treatment of not only the Satanic Panic, but also its origin and significance, and its follow-on movements, which dominate American politics now. Enlightening and absorbing.

I will start out by saying i know this podcast won’t be for everyone. It was really hard to listen to and it got really heavy at times. Each episode always left me thinking about my recollections of this period of time (the 80’s to mid 90’s) and how much of this “Satanic Panic” shaped peoples church experience during that time. The series examines how this hysteria influenced popular culture, criminal cases, and political movements, often diverting attention from actual issues within communities and institutions. It feels eerily familiar to things we are seeing today. My experience with religion and faith is entirely different than yours. My walk has been shaped by experiences and beliefs that i no longer align with and continues to evolve. It’s ok to question along the way. “What you win them with is what you win them to.” - Jared Wilson So, what happens when one discovers they were won to the faith with a series of lies?

Oof. I really wanted to like this show. And i did like about half of it. The first episode is gripping. Unfortunately the second episode goes so deep into the cultural history of the satanic panic that the show never really finds its way out. Cosper jokes about wearing a tin foil hat in the last episode, but leaning towards conspiracies isnt the real problem with this pod. It suffers from a lack of editing. They threw in everything and it ends up being about nothing. It's a convoluted mess. Still - as far as i know its the only Christian take on the Satanic panic so that's something even if it loses the plot.

The podcast showed a lot of promise despite it being supported by “Christianity” Today, but the host has a huge ax to grind against Trump and his supporters. He spends half of his podcasts giving a fairly entertaining and at times compelling discussion of the satanic panic from the 70s and 80s, and if the whole podcast had been about this, it would have been better, although many others have done it better. Unfortunately, the other half of the podcast is mocking Christians and conservative republicans. He rightly points out that those who bought into the satanic panic made boogeymen of normal people and were caught up in a frenzy…and then he does the EXACT same thing with Donald Trump. He is way hung up about January 6th, using it as an awkward comparison to the satanic panic that falls flat. What a shame, and a disappointment.