99. The Satanic Panic: The Devil is in the Details

Note: We love that some of our listeners enjoy our podcast with their entire families. However, this episode contains some content that may be a little inappropriate for the little ones.

“I dedicate this edit to all my friends who couldn’t watch The Smurfs because they were allegedly satanic.”
— Our editor, Ray

We know—we’re a few days late for Halloween. But bear with us.

The Satanic Panic was a period of widespread fear that underground Satanic groups were orchestrating a conspiracy involving child abuse and ritualistic sacrifice. For years, police departments issued public service announcements, psychiatric professionals voiced their concern, and, of course, the Christian church sounded the alarm.

There was only one problem: there was zero evidence to support those claims.

So, what do we chalk this up to? Silly, superstitious Christians? Or something far more nuanced and complex (probably that one, tbh).

Join the guys as we unpack this fascinating and controversial era. Also, we end up talking a surprising amount about Dungeons & Dragons—but we promise, it’s all relevant to the topic!

Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/chumphistory

Chapters

• 0:03 A lil banter from ya bois
• 1:50 Happy Birthday Taylor!
• 5:18 Our New Series is..........
• 8:54 Let's Get into the Satanic Panic
• 41:18 Taylor's Turn
• 1:08:23 Tommy Waxes Poetic

Transcript

Mr. Borkavich (00:00.645)
Hey everybody, welcome to Church History for Chumps. My name is John Simon, the Marxist with the Mostest. I'm here with Tommy the Tank Engine Duel and the old dirty Baptist, Taylor Treadway. How we doin'? Guys, I said that and immediately I was like, I don't like calling myself a Marxist. I'm not a Marxist. And I don't like that now you guys have said it so much that we've got our listeners calling me the Marxist.

Kim Jung Un (00:13.343)
Yeeeeaaaah!

Kim Jung Un (00:26.06)
See, I don't mind being labeled the HOA bootlicker.

Mr. Borkavich (00:29.607)
Because that's what you are. That's right.

Kim Jung Un (00:31.362)
Yeah, because they keep my property value high. Thank you. Thank you, HOA, and you provide pools.

Mr. Borkavich (00:38.983)
Thank you for the pools. Yeah, I don't know. I just don't, I don't like it. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (00:40.782)
Yeah, baby. Well, hey, we, we have a big milestone to share with everybody. In October, we hit 3,400 downloads.

Mr. Borkavich (00:49.191)
What's that?

yeah!

Mr. Borkavich (00:55.909)
Yeah, kind of insane. we're, I don't know. I'm not ready for paparazzi yet, you guys. My heart's not in the right place. I'm just.

Theotokos Appreciator (00:55.996)
day!

Theotokos Appreciator (01:02.12)
Yeah, probably not going to read the Instagram comments anymore. We're just going to ignore. Act like we don't know nobody.

Kim Jung Un (01:03.38)
I am.

Mr. Borkavich (01:08.965)
Yeah. that's true. Yeah. See when, when people, when people used to be like, are you John from church history for chums? used to be like, wow, my gosh, thank you for listening. Now when they say it, I'm just going to be like, gosh. And then just keep moving.

Kim Jung Un (01:09.323)
I will.

Kim Jung Un (01:12.974)
When I blow up?

Theotokos Appreciator (01:15.176)
You

Kim Jung Un (01:24.46)
I know you guys are joking, but if we just keep growing at this rate, I'm totally just going to be the guy that's like, I read every comment. I respond to everybody.

Mr. Borkavich (01:35.131)
You're already that guy. You are. You are currently that guy. I know. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (01:37.184)
I know, it just consumes me.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:40.2)
So what happened today with the birthday post? I thought it was Taylor's birthday.

Mr. Borkavich (01:44.564)
yeah. I don't even know.

Kim Jung Un (01:45.91)
Yeah, probably so did everybody else. Poor Serena's like, did Taylor's, did the Facebook page get hacked? Thank you, Serena.

Mr. Borkavich (01:53.671)
I really don't even, I was just like, man, we haven't posted in a while and we've got the giveaway of course, which was fun. But I was like, what if I, I was like, I know, I'll post for Taylor's birthday. What?

Kim Jung Un (02:05.09)
You know the worst part is that Brandy immediately jumped in on the troll.

Mr. Borkavich (02:09.703)
Of course she did! She's a good wife. That's what a good wife does, man. It was great. And I got to use those memes of the guy wearing that terrible shirt.

Kim Jung Un (02:19.924)
equally amused and annoyed. Dude, the meme of mom says, what was it? What did it say? Mom said you have to pick a three player game.

Theotokos Appreciator (02:20.232)
Yeah

Mr. Borkavich (02:23.783)
Spomb said you guys have to play a game with three players.

Theotokos Appreciator (02:28.776)
Yeah, that was great.

Kim Jung Un (02:35.446)
Whatever.

Mr. Borkavich (02:35.679)
man, no that was so good. anyways, yeah, Taylor, but I mean, you have been friends for a long time. I know that your birthday is in November. It's club, it's coming up though, December.

Theotokos Appreciator (02:39.368)
You could say that meme.

Kim Jung Un (02:39.618)
Happy birthday!

Mr. Borkavich (02:56.281)
It's you're, you're a spring baby, huh? my gosh. Was it like a month ago?

Theotokos Appreciator (03:03.186)
Summer boy.

Mr. Borkavich (03:04.123)
You're a big old summer. You're,

Kim Jung Un (03:04.6)
Nope. You guys have managed to guess everything, but it's February. Wow. You still wrong. It's February. I don't care though.

Mr. Borkavich (03:08.891)
You fall?

Theotokos Appreciator (03:15.608)
But February is spring in Almost.

Kim Jung Un (03:18.892)
That's true. Well, it's early Feb. No, it's early February, so it's still cold. February 4th, very close.

Mr. Borkavich (03:19.121)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Theotokos Appreciator (03:22.696)
Mm-hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (03:23.931)
Was it like the third? so close, man. It's my first guest. I almost went somewhere.

Theotokos Appreciator (03:27.176)
Ooooo

Kim Jung Un (03:29.75)
Yeah, I'm not a big birthday person. rarely do anything and I like adults that make their birthday like the event of the month is actually like a pet peeve of

Mr. Borkavich (03:41.575)
I don't know any dudes that do that.

Theotokos Appreciator (03:41.736)
Hmm, that's crazy coming from a Disney adult, but okay.

Kim Jung Un (03:47.403)
okay, I'm sorry that I know what high quality entertainment safety cleanliness is. I'm sorry.

Mr. Borkavich (03:54.876)
Have you ever wanted to get sick at Disneyland just to go to the medic station?

Kim Jung Un (03:55.266)
Family friendly.

Kim Jung Un (04:00.898)
I've never thought of that, but I think next time I'm at Disney, I'm gonna need a gout flare-up.

Theotokos Appreciator (04:01.169)
Ooh, I've never heard of this.

Mr. Borkavich (04:06.393)
I'm telling you dude, I think they have the cure for cancer behind those curtains, bro.

Kim Jung Un (04:10.222)
than they might. You like walk in, Mickey's dressed up as a doctor, Minnie's a nurse. Like, ho ho, what's wrong, pal?

Theotokos Appreciator (04:18.253)
my gosh.

Mr. Borkavich (04:18.609)
Like I feel so that actually sounds like a horror movie.

Kim Jung Un (04:20.974)
It's my account, Dr. Mickey. Ho ho, I have something for you.

Theotokos Appreciator (04:22.888)
Ha ha!

Mr. Borkavich (04:28.923)
He like already knows your medical history. That's the third flare up this year, huh?

Theotokos Appreciator (04:34.3)
They bring out what-

He just brings out one of those like cattle, you know, tranquilizer things and... like, yeah, yeah. He's like, no country for old men, flips a coin, call it!

Mr. Borkavich (04:43.481)
gosh, he just plunges into his brain.

Kim Jung Un (04:43.822)
Time to go at night night!

Kim Jung Un (04:55.918)
All that to say, in a long roundabout way, thank you to everybody that regularly listens.

Mr. Borkavich (05:02.181)
and wished Taylor a happy birthday, of course. Yeah, so we should say, because we forgot to mention this, so thank you to everyone who voted on a new series. I'm going to pull back the curtain and show you guys the behind the scenes. We were actually really hoping it was not going to be the Crusades, but the Crusades won. And you know what? We're going to do it. And we're...

Kim Jung Un (05:04.238)
Yeah, thank you.

Kim Jung Un (05:26.338)
We're men of our word.

Mr. Borkavich (05:27.847)
And we're excited, we are. We've honestly wanted to the Crusades for a long time. The reason we've pushed it back, especially for you guys who've been listening to us for a long time, is just because it's a beefy boy, you guys. It's a beefy, beefy topic to get into. But, I mean, I don't know about you guys, I've already started doing some research. I've got a great audiobook I've been listening to. I've got a series of lectures I've been listening to from, I think, Tulane. So yeah.

I'm getting ready. I'm getting psyched. I'm getting hyped.

Theotokos Appreciator (06:00.296)
Yeah, when we're looking for that in the new year is when we're gonna start dropping those. Is that the idea?

Kim Jung Un (06:00.566)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (06:04.615)
That's right. Yeah. So first, uh, first pod of the new year, we're going to do that. So until then, we're just kind of going to do a little bit of scatterbrained approach. Here's the thing we've been like, we've been shackled to the early church for like nine months and we're just, we're just ready to sell our wild podcast oats again. We just want to let our hair down and do whatever we're going to do some holiday themed stuff. We're going to do, you know, we're going to do whatever we want.

Theotokos Appreciator (06:14.504)
Back to the olden days.

Kim Jung Un (06:24.654)
That's right.

Kim Jung Un (06:32.078)
We're trying to get some guests. Trying to get some guests for you guys. Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (06:34.085)
Yeah, I guess it'll be fun. That would be cool. Yeah. Taylor has been talking.

Theotokos Appreciator (06:38.184)
Should I announce our special guest since he's confirmed that he's gonna do a podcast with us? Or should we wait to announce that? Keep them in suspense.

Kim Jung Un (06:45.454)
We should keep it a surprise. He's a big deal though, actually.

Mr. Borkavich (06:48.773)
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, Jordan Peterson, you guys like huge.

Theotokos Appreciator (06:49.574)
Alright, got a big guest coming.

Kim Jung Un (06:52.13)
Yeah, so. Have you ever heard of him?

Theotokos Appreciator (06:56.473)
Hahaha

Have you ever heard a man cry on a microphone?

Kim Jung Un (07:00.526)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (07:04.27)
Clean your eyes.

Theotokos Appreciator (07:05.084)
then you're in luck.

Mr. Borkavich (07:06.695)
That's right. So yeah, today, obviously we're a few days late for Halloween, but we wanted to hit you guys with the Satanic Panic, which is about as far from the early church as possible in every way imaginable. Absolutely.

Kim Jung Un (07:15.16)
Little spooky dookie.

Kim Jung Un (07:19.758)
I

You know, still history, though. know, r slash ask historians, it's got to be 20 years to be considered historical for them. So.

Mr. Borkavich (07:29.467)
Dang, that means we lived through some of this stuff though, right?

Kim Jung Un (07:32.738)
Yeah, we're operating within the window of living memory.

Mr. Borkavich (07:35.719)
Holy crap, we are living memory.

Theotokos Appreciator (07:37.16)
This is a pretty, speaking of Reddit, this is a pretty Reddit-coded topic, feel like. I feel like the good people of Reddit probably have lots of opinions about the satanic panic.

Kim Jung Un (07:38.286)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (07:45.222)
Hmm

Mr. Borkavich (07:50.524)
Well, that's where I'm excited to kind of do my spiel, because I've got a lot to say about this. I feel like I have a lot of... I mean, you guys know me, I'm Mr. Nuance. I've got a lot to say. And I don't think this is going to be dunking on the dumb old Christians for an hour. Like, I don't think that at all. So, yeah.

Kim Jung Un (08:08.214)
Yeah, I was actually really excited. I'll just toot our own horns. I've really appreciated how we are very benefited the doubt giving here, you know, and I really do appreciate that. Because, yeah, you're right. This I have a feeling everything I was researching and reading, was just Duncan on the dumb old Christians. And there's like a lot more going on behind the scenes of this event. Anyway, anyway, anyway.

Mr. Borkavich (08:18.823)
Hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (08:32.199)
Sure, Yeah. So should we get it popping? I got a cold open.

Theotokos Appreciator (08:38.749)
Ooh, let's go.

Kim Jung Un (08:38.838)
Hit us. Make us frosty.

Mr. Borkavich (08:39.911)
Let's do it. Frosty. All right. Get your jackets, team. All right. The second half of the 20th century was really just one drastic cataclysmic change after another. Think the Vietnam War, the close of the civil rights movement, the explosion of counter-cultural, sorry, counter-culture, AKA the filthy hippies. The popularization of television in American households just became

super prominent, whatever the heck disco was. It's during this time, in second half of the 20th century, that the satanic panic truly took hold. This grim, yet whimsically rhyming period of mass hysteria sits uncomfortably in the memories of the many who recall it. Modern day onlookers may be tempted to abuse hindsight and scoff at its perpetuators. Worse,

This may be fodder to mock the seemingly silly and superstitious nature of American Christian culture. I would argue, however, that the so-called Satanic panic resulted from a metaphorical seven-car pileup of a number of cultural factors, the likes of which may seem foreign to us in our modern lens.

While Christians were among those leading this massive paranoia, they were often joined by law enforcement, medical professionals, psychotherapists, and other well-meaning citizens who all truly wanted one thing, to protect the children. Let's begin. Think of the children, man. It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are? Hopefully not with any Satanists. Also, just disclaimer, we did all of our own research on this, but...

Kim Jung Un (10:16.93)
Think of the children.

Theotokos Appreciator (10:17.256)
Mm.

Mr. Borkavich (10:30.311)
like Christianity today does have a really cool podcast series that I've listened to off and on. did not pull any of our research based on off of that podcast, not intentionally because it was bad, but just because, you know, going from pod to pod is weird, but I would recommend it by Mike Cosper, same dude that did, rise and fall of Mars Hill. it's called the devil and deep blue sea. think it's worth a listen. So if you want to listen to like 10 hours of this content,

go over there and listen to more good Christian content. Okay, first, let's define our terms. A lot of us, when we hear about the Satanic Panic, we think about the first time that our parents told us that we couldn't play Dungeons and Dragons because the Gorgon was a form of sorcery and was going to invite demons into your bedroom. And I'll say, this is one of the trickle-down effects of it, but at its nucleus, the Satanic Panic was a time in the 1980s full

of claims that there were satanic cults that were abusing children, committing murder, and performing widespread ritualistic sacrifice. So it's not quite, like we tend to associate it with, you can't play Pokemon, you can't watch this TV show, and that's a part of it, but at its core, especially in the 80s and early 90s, this is like this frenzy where everyone in America was freaking out because they thought that...

Kim Jung Un (11:58.029)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (11:58.207)
demon-worshipping people were gonna molest their children. Also, this is a little late to the game, this may not be the best podcast to listen to at the dinner table, because there's some gnarly stuff in this. Yeah, there's some gnarly stuff in this, and I'm not gonna read quotes as explicitly as I can, but yeah, there's maybe some stuff here.

Kim Jung Un (12:08.654)
While you're driving the children to school? Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (12:20.472)
I was just thinking about that. there's some, yeah, I was wondering that too.

Mr. Borkavich (12:25.297)
Yeah, because it's just a little, it's a little froggy. It's a little froggy.

Kim Jung Un (12:28.62)
Yeah. What's interesting, I don't have the stats on the ages of our listeners, but I'm willing to bet most of our listeners are our age, roughly.

Mr. Borkavich (12:40.443)
I think it's 28 to 44 and I'm embarrassed that I know that stat line immediately. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (12:42.724)
you have, you have the stat off the top of your head, good for you. It's our marketing guy, J.S.

Theotokos Appreciator (12:46.056)
We do have a number of listeners who have said they like to listen with their kids. So it's probably good to have that tag for today.

Mr. Borkavich (12:52.601)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll put a little something in the show notes too.

Kim Jung Un (12:54.83)
Well, I'm saying for the age, our experience with the Satanic Panic, like firsthand, our window of living memory, right, has been more with like the second generation, the whispers of it. Like I was originally not allowed to read Harry Potter. I'm guessing, John, were you allowed to watch Care Bears?

Mr. Borkavich (13:15.611)
same.

Mr. Borkavich (13:20.743)
Care Bears? No. Teletubbies I think was off the table though.

Kim Jung Un (13:27.618)
That's because your parents hated it, not because there was demonic...

Theotokos Appreciator (13:29.83)
No, that's just cause... That's just cause John just had a good old fashioned African American father who knew better than the son watching Care Bears.

Mr. Borkavich (13:34.983)
Dude, I've heard people say that they couldn't watch the Teletubbies because they didn't speak it. They spoke like gibberish and people thought they were speaking like incantations and stuff.

Kim Jung Un (13:35.854)
Now watch that nonsense on my television

Kim Jung Un (13:47.352)
Yeah. wow. I know-

Theotokos Appreciator (13:50.236)
I gotta be honest, when you go back and watch some those Teletubbie clips, I'm like, yeah, something's off. Something's off here.

Mr. Borkavich (13:55.848)
It's real weird. It's real weird. They like worship it. It's so strange. Very weird. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (13:56.974)
The baby's face in the sun really sends it. Yeah. The sun is rising. So I was Harry Potter limited in my early years, but then by the time I hit fifth grade, my parents were like, whatever, he wants to read, just let him read. So I was personally allowed to play fantasy and Pokemon and all that. And my parents even would buy Pokemon for me.

but I know that like my wife had a very different upbringing with that. John did. Tommy, what about you?

Mr. Borkavich (14:30.151)
Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (14:32.988)
It was a mixed bag for us. was kind of some effects of this, I think, in our family's upbringing. We weren't allowed, I wasn't allowed to play Pokemon. I'm not totally sure why. And then Harry Potter was kind of like off the table until I was about like 13. I think my dad had been reading them and he's like, these are just legit. so, so then we all read them.

Mr. Borkavich (14:47.633)
Mm-hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (14:58.887)
That's awesome.

Theotokos Appreciator (15:02.95)
And then my mom ended up reading them like years later and really liked them as well. So I don't know, but they weren't like, I don't know. There's a, feel like in Christian circles, there's always the interesting element of a lot of influence from Lewis and Tolkien who deal a lot with magic, you know? And so I feel like there's this internal confliction where I think, I feel like people were just going off of vibes a lot of times. Like what was the vibe of this thing?

Mr. Borkavich (15:07.559)
Mm-hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (15:22.631)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (15:30.491)
Yeah, can I also say how grateful I am that like, could you imagine how much harder it would be to be a Christian who's into like fantasy without the precedent of Lewis and Tolkien? Because they basically were like, yeah, this is magic, but we're not, this isn't demonic. This is just, you know, a way to expand your imagination or whatever. But without them, life might've been harder.

Theotokos Appreciator (15:52.038)
Yeah. My dad, so my dad was a Christian growing up in the late 60s and 70s and he grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons and that never made it into our family's culture. But I don't think it was because it was taboo. I think that they were just trying to kind of develop a different family culture. But my parents, I'm really thankful for my parents kind of.

lens that they push like cultural things and entertainment through was honestly, it was Philippians four eight that my that my dad would always want to help us analyze culture and entertainment by is like whatever's true, whatever is, you know, loving, whatever is good. Think about such things. I don't have the full verse memorized, but that's the that was kind of the ethic, I think. And so they they did have a higher tolerance for things that were dark.

Mr. Borkavich (16:27.803)
Mm-hmm.

Theotokos Appreciator (16:51.1)
than like a kind of like fundamentalist, as long as like good was winning in the end kind of thing.

Mr. Borkavich (16:55.591)
Sure.

Mr. Borkavich (16:59.143)
Yeah, yeah. I think I heard Tim Keller say one time that as long as the evil is sin and as long as the good is Christ or like in a similar vein, like it's good art. So like I remember hearing in the interview where Denzel Washington talked about his role in Training Day and he was like, it's very important to me. I'll spoil the movie for you guys who haven't watched it. It's very old.

Kim Jung Un (16:59.342)
Mmm.

Mr. Borkavich (17:24.815)
Like he was like, it's very important for me that I, as the bad guy of the movie, die in an embarrassing way because like evil should be triumphed over. Like that was his like Christian conviction. So yeah, I'm very much of that same mindset of like, if evil is, you know, if evil is losing and good is winning, I think, especially for kids, that's a good thing. Don't let your kids watch Training Day.

Theotokos Appreciator (17:48.904)
That's always been kind of my personal rubric for like, in particular with film, the difference between like a thriller and a horror movie to me is the question of like, who wins? A lot of horror has a supernatural element to it, but not all horror does. Some horror is just like a serial killer that just kills everybody and there's really no resolution. But then...

Mr. Borkavich (18:14.887)
Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (18:15.728)
A lot of thrillers tend to be movies where there is something horrifying going on, there's some sort of crime being committed against the weak or whatever. And it can get pretty dark, but then usually there's a resolution at the end, which you don't always find in the horror genre. And so that to me is kind of, I don't, I don't know.

I don't know if it would be good for someone's soul to just like only watch thrillers all the time, but I feel like there's a pretty critical difference there because of what's anchoring it.

Mr. Borkavich (18:47.515)
Yeah, I agree.

Kim Jung Un (18:48.758)
It's right. I love you brought up Denzel. I love training day because it's so explicit in it. It's almost corny, but I don't care because it's like here's little grandma, you know, walking with her walker and then like the evil bad guy walks up and pushes grandma and Denzel's just sitting there trying to retire always, right? Sipping his coffee and then he's like, hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (19:12.775)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (19:16.012)
And then, you know, the next scene is him just taking out guy that pushed grandma in like an unapologetic way. You're like, yeah, baby. So I don't know, vigilanteism.

Mr. Borkavich (19:25.287)
Mm-hmm.

Are you sure that's not the equalizer that you're thinking of? You said Training Day, and Training Day, he's like a bad criminal.

Kim Jung Un (19:30.989)
What did I say?

Theotokos Appreciator (19:31.016)
That did sound like me, you said training day.

Kim Jung Un (19:35.427)
no, no, no, I totally meant equalizer. My brain, like the Microsoft word in my brain said equalizer.

Theotokos Appreciator (19:39.73)
Yeah, those movies are so good.

Mr. Borkavich (19:41.96)
Yeah, I was like, I don't, I was like, I don't think he's that anyways. good, all good. Okay. So let's get into this a little bit. So as we, again, I want to set the table for where we were when this satanic panic kind of kicks off in the eighties. So I want to ask you guys a quick little trivia question. When would you wager that the first law that addressed child abuse was passed in the United States? Give me a ballpark guess.

Kim Jung Un (19:45.74)
No, no, no, no. No, it's definitely equalizer.

Theotokos Appreciator (20:10.44)
So are we not counting like the labor laws and stuff during the industrial?

Mr. Borkavich (20:14.523)
Yeah, I would say like specifically like domestic abuse, not like workplace.

Theotokos Appreciator (20:20.306)
sometime after 1950.

Mr. Borkavich (20:22.343)
Okay, okay, say, say.

Kim Jung Un (20:24.386)
Hmm, my context clues want to... No, I didn't. I don't know. I don't know. But I would say, like, late 50s, maybe. Early 60s. I guess 1970s.

Mr. Borkavich (20:26.983)
You might actually know because you've researched.

Mr. Borkavich (20:35.719)
1974.

Yeah, 1974, the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. an interesting thing. And again, this is just, think, a crazy reminder of just how much our opinions of things have changed with the way that the 20th century kind of developed in America. For the early half of the 20th century, there were two kind of assumptions made about children and abuse. The first was that

Families were pretty much entitled to do whatever they felt was necessary when it came to disciplining their children. And if that meant Billy came to school with a couple bruises, it's like, well, okay, hopefully Billy learned his lesson. That really wasn't very much a taboo at the time. And the other one was there was just this rampant belief that sexual abuse to children was just extraordinarily uncommon. That just barely ever happened. I think I saw a statistic that like,

People thought that it happened maybe four or five out of every million kids got abused like that. So they just assumed this never happened. And so then what happens is in 1962, this guy named, shoot, Kemba or Kempa? I didn't write his last name down, but he's gonna write a paper called The Battered Child Syndrome.

Kim Jung Un (21:49.978)
Wow.

Mr. Borkavich (22:04.859)
which is groundbreaking, but he's essentially gonna suggest two things that sound very basic. One is physical abuse can happen in any family of children, can happen in any family, not just families that are like, you know, full of criminals. And that the long-term or even acute abuse of children can lead to life altering consequences, which can be physical and can be psychiatric.

very basic ideas of what we know about child abuse today, but back then they were like, what? And so again, yeah, 10 years later, there's gonna be the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. And then throughout the 70s and 80s, there's gonna be all these child advocacy groups that are gonna spring up that are going to basically be these support groups or advocacy centers all about, yeah, protecting children from.

abuse, whether it's at home or, you know, just in other places, just providing, providing support for these kids. yeah. Yeah. Big time.

Theotokos Appreciator (23:03.848)
It's like an industry now at this point. You've got the International Justice Mission and things like that. I mean, not just that. I there's probably thousands of organizations that their sole focus is on.

Mr. Borkavich (23:17.573)
Well, yeah. mean, dude, I remember, I think I did a training back when I was starting my first kind of social work job, maybe 10 years ago. And I learned that when Child Protective Services first launched as like a wing of the state government, it was like overwhelmingly negative because people were like, you can't tell me what to do to my kid in my home.

And like, I mean, think we can all agree that CPS or DCS has a fair amount of controversy attached to it, even to this day. But I think all of us would still agree that like, yeah, if a parent is like repeatedly abusing, like not like spare the rod, spoil the child, but like abusing a child that there should be some kind of intervention there. And when it first started, they were like, no, like that's not how this should be at all. So in the sixties and seventies, we have this giant like shift in opinion.

on how this stuff goes down. And another factor that is really gonna be interesting when we get into this is feminism is blowing up in the sixties and seventies. And you guys know what happens with feminism. Women are deciding to join the workforce for the first time ever. And so what happens to these kids when dad's going to work and mom's going to work? The kids are going to daycares and all of a sudden

Kim Jung Un (24:41.038)
You have the day cares and the latch key kids.

Mr. Borkavich (24:46.119)
Right. And so you've got this scenario where the American public is hypersensitive about what can happen to children and just the risks of abuse. And at the same time, which is kind of an ironic, seems like a, seems like a, you know, these two things shouldn't go together. They're also sending their kids away for extended periods of time every day. And there's this huge like paranoia of like, what if these daycares

are like doing something and what if we can't actually trust them? so to, yeah, I mean, no, very fair question, very fair question. And so there's this great quote that I want to read from a sociologist, his name is James T. Richardson. He's going to say that the key factors which led to the rise of the moral panic includes the existence of Satanist churches, which we'll get into, real thing.

Theotokos Appreciator (25:22.78)
Fair question.

Mr. Borkavich (25:44.828)
The rise of Christian fundamentalism, which posits a real Satan active in the world, also very much arguable. Development of a child saver movement, which we kind of just discussed. Emergence of the adult occult survivor of alleged satanic activities and the related repressed memory phenomena, which we'll get into. Helping professionals such as.

Social work, law enforcement, psychotherapy, accepting Satanism as real and promoting such ideas through professional activities such as continuing education training, the rise of feminism, the social movement and the spread of Satanism around the Western world promoted in large part by American anti-Satanist missionaries and globalized mass media. 1967 is when the Church of Satan will be founded by Anton LeVay.

those who know really anything about LeVe and Satanism know that it's not about drinking blood. is really just, it's a hundred percent. It is cringy, atheistic humanism. It's not really Satanism.

Theotokos Appreciator (26:42.13)
like doctored up atheism kind of.

Kim Jung Un (26:47.128)
It's hedonism. Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (26:53.736)
But they were the clothes, so to speak, of the occult.

Mr. Borkavich (26:57.137)
They like the symbology. They like the occult iconography for sure.

Kim Jung Un (27:01.038)
I think what is a very fair question is, because I hear this all the time across many podcasts, well, it's not real Satanism. They don't actually believe what they're doing. And it's just kind of like, at what point are you doing something ironically so much that you are just actually doing the thing?

Theotokos Appreciator (27:20.53)
Well, yeah, I feel like it's similar to any any religious group where you kind of have like sects, right? So I've I've seen interviews from people who have been involved in Satanic cults that are I mean they are doing the stuff they're doing they're doing You know magic they're doing Worship services basically to demons or to Satan explicitly they're they're doing

Mr. Borkavich (27:28.657)
Mm-hmm.

Theotokos Appreciator (27:49.574)
you know, blood sacrifices and things like that. Yeah. But what is kind of, I don't know, like the, the, mainstream, what you like, if you, if you hear about satanic cults in America, usually what you're seeing on the surface at least is that, like kind of like a, it's like a, like a, like a militant atheism basically is how I would describe it.

Mr. Borkavich (27:49.819)
sacrificing animals. Yeah. Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (28:16.219)
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's fair to say, like you said, there are definitely sects of Satanism. like I saw, I did a little research and found this like Satanism sect that's like, it's like Satanist, but it's also like Neo-Nazi. And it's like, they have like terrorist organizations throughout England and stuff. And I'm like, holy crap, these guys are checking all the boxes.

Kim Jung Un (28:38.286)
Oh, yeah, dude. I think that also took root up in the Pacific Northwest of America. Yeah. Yep, yep.

Mr. Borkavich (28:46.879)
I see. Okay. Yeah. But like we said, yeah, I mean, and I think you made a great point, Taylor. Like, I mean, here's the thing, dude. Like one thing that I think an area where the pendulum could swing too far for us as Christians is to look at this and be like, we're making a big fuss about it. It's not a big deal if you call yourself a Satanist. Look, if you're, if you happen to be

someone who's not a Christian, listening to our Very Christian podcast. First of all, thank you so much for being here. Second, don't, yeah, very charitable, very considerate, but also like, please don't do Satanist stuff. Like we really truly believe that there are, like one of the fundamental understandings of Christianity is that there are powers beyond what we can see. And some of them,

Kim Jung Un (29:16.462)
You

Very charitable of you.

Mr. Borkavich (29:38.809)
love us and are filled with the goodness and divine love of Christ, and some of them hate us and are capable of evil that we can't imagine. So don't pretend to do like spells and talk to demons and call yourself a Satanist. Like it's bad. It's dangerous.

Theotokos Appreciator (29:54.66)
That's a good exhortation and I'm curious to hear your guys' reflections as you dove into this, but I feel like an interesting thing happens in maybe just Western culture period, maybe it's not just America where humanism and kind of this secular enlightenment, rationalism is so pervasive for centuries, maybe reaching its apex even in the 20th century.

that would say, like demons, things like that, they're not real. But we would know, we would say that even secular humanism is a religion that is actually worshiping a god. They just might not fully realize it, but it's there. Like secular humanism is demonic. And so then you see things like a Ouija board become entertainment where it's like, well, it's just a joke.

you know, who was at Hasbro that like made that, you know, or who like, who has the, you know, made that into a game that people brought into their homes. And it's, it's, it's put forward as entertainment because we all know it's not real, but it is real. Like there's something, there's something going on here still.

Mr. Borkavich (30:55.505)
Mm-hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (31:12.027)
Right.

Kim Jung Un (31:12.374)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (31:15.653)
Yeah, secular humanism is like, it reminds me of that parable that Jesus talks about where it's like, if you banish an evil spirit from a house, but the house remains empty, then it will just be filled with more evil spirits. It's like, like I see secular humanism as just an empty house. it's, you know, in their minds, they've cast out all these spirits of, we're not superstitious. We're not uneducated Christians. We're

Theotokos Appreciator (31:26.056)
Wow, that's good.

Mr. Borkavich (31:41.339)
We're open-minded, we're inclusive, we're accepting of all religions and faiths, but they're also extraordinarily vulnerable. Because these are the same people who practice astronomy and use the law of attraction and things that are very like...

Theotokos Appreciator (31:55.794)
Did you mean to say astrology?

Mr. Borkavich (31:58.46)
Did I say astronomy? Crap. Yeah, looking at soup.

Kim Jung Un (32:00.045)
Those darn scientists using telescopes. Hey, John's a fundamentalist. You heard it here first, boys.

Theotokos Appreciator (32:02.5)
hahahahah

Mr. Borkavich (32:07.239)
I hate to. Galileo was wrong. I don't care what you guys think. He was wrong and he should have been burned at the stake. Yeah. All right. Let me get a few more nuggets in, but I love this conversation. We'll keep it moving. So we've kind of set the table. The US is very sensitive about kids being abused. Kids are also now spending more time than ever outside of their families and daycares and preschools and such.

Theotokos Appreciator (32:09.927)
Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (32:13.704)
Hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (32:33.023)
And the Church of Satan exists. because again, we talked about the counterculture movement. So people are moving away from Christianity. There's a lot of secularism happening. There's the sexual revolution happening. The exorcist comes out in 1973. The Manson murders happen. Yeah, it's super old.

Theotokos Appreciator (32:53.03)
Wow, is it that old?

Kim Jung Un (32:55.662)
I'm so glad you mentioned the Manson murders. I was gonna, that.

Mr. Borkavich (32:58.513)
Dude, it scared the crap out of everybody, man. Like, come on.

Kim Jung Un (33:02.604)
That I don't I have the guy's name written somewhere, but I'm not even gonna it's not worth reading it But when he he was on trial and he was telling what happened and before he killed Sharon Tate, like he said I am the devil here to do hit the devil's work

Mr. Borkavich (33:15.909)
Yeah, that's Tex Watson, think, or something like that. Yeah, no, real, real bad. So the two big things, and then I'll kind of hand the mic off to Taylor because some of you got some other stuff, but the two big things that contributed to this movement, and they're both just so painful. So here's the thing. So this is like the infancy of psychotherapists knowing how to deal.

Kim Jung Un (33:20.822)
Yeah, what's it? Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (33:45.446)
with childhood trauma, because remember, like 20 years ago, they didn't think childhood trauma existed. So they're really new at it. And suddenly there's like posited this idea that maybe you can suppress memories and you can live as an adult and have a memory of really, really awful abuse that's just completely suppressed that maybe a good therapist can help you reawaken.

And so they started using these techniques which are largely debunked and criticized by psychiatrists today, but essentially techniques to burrow into old memories and kind of reawaken them. And that is going to lead to a publication of a book in 1980 called Michelle Remembers. And this is a book where

Basically, this woman by the name of Michelle Smith is going to write that she recovered this memory in adulthood after she had a miscarriage and 200 hours of therapy, again, as an adult, not as a child, that she had forgotten memories of being tormented during her childhood by nightmarish perverted sexual abuse by a satanic cult, which imprisoned her for several months when she was five years old.

She forgot these experiences for more than 20 years with a therapist who I think she married later, which is also kind of weird. I'm gonna read this quote. This book is, again, I'm gonna try to censor some of these words just, you know, because it's kind of aggressive. This book is almost a misery memoir, little Michelle aged five being tortured, sexually abused.

forced to defecate on a bible and a crucifix witnessing babies and adults butchered and sacrificed spending hours naked in a cage filled with snakes having a devil's tail and horns surgically attached to her these grotesque abuses are said to have gone on for almost a year until michelle's indomitable christian faith with the actual physical intervention of jesus and the virgin mary defeated the satanists and the devil himself

Mr. Borkavich (36:05.927)
Smith and Paster, her therapist, became the earliest claims makers or missionaries who were to spread the satanic panic. So this book is going to become massive. People are going to read it and basically think it's not just going to be like, what if my children get abused in these situations? It's now going to create this question of, crap, maybe I was abused and maybe my friends were abused and maybe this person I know who has trauma was abused.

And the horrific thing about it is this book has been completely debunked. There is literally no evidence of any of this happening. And the sad thing is that because this is going to really just shake the public consciousness of what's possible, you're going to have this swarm of people who are going to be flooding to

law enforcement and to therapists who are going to be like, I think something might've happened to me, can we talk about this? And one of the strategies of doing this like memory recovery therapy is basically like assume the person was abused. And so in a lot of times they're like the people they're talking to for support and for therapy are like feeding them like, well, how bad was it when you were abused?

Theotokos Appreciator (37:28.84)
Hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (37:34.088)
you know, was it one Satanist who assaulted you or was it like a swarm of them who did it? Like, what did they make you do to the Bible? Like they're asking these like super loaded questions and planting these memories that sometimes people would go on to retract. But the thing is, tens of thousands of these types of cases are going to be circulating during this like 10, 15 year time.

and nothing is substantiated. There is not a lick of evidence that is going to purport that any of this stuff actually happened.

Theotokos Appreciator (38:06.79)
You know, you know what I'm wondering if maybe played into the general distrust that people had maybe of even each other and of authority figures at the time was if this, so this book was published in 1980, something like that. So that's only three years after the public found out about MKUltra and what the US government had been doing for the, you know, 20 years prior to that.

Mr. Borkavich (38:21.521)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (38:30.791)
yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (38:36.36)
with like messing around with you know kids and kids memories and People finding out to like wow like I was involved in a government experiment, and I didn't even know it I just wonder if there's any sort of kind of conscious overlap there

Mr. Borkavich (38:52.037)
That is interesting. I don't know hardly anything at all about MKUltra, but I could definitely see if something like that happened. This could be a time when people already didn't really trust that they couldn't be taken advantage of. Last thing I'll say is in 1983, a few years after this, it's literally the most expensive court case in American history. It's going to cost the taxpayers $15 million.

It's called the McMartin Preschool Case. A mother of a little boy is gonna make an accusation that this woman who owns her preschool, I think just with like her and her son, that her little boy was abused. The police are then gonna send a letter to the rest of the students, like 200 kids, and basically say, we're looking into this. Is there any chance that you have concerns also? It's gonna lead to a ton of these kids.

going to police, going to therapists, and the same thing. They're going to be asked these extremely loaded questions about their abuse, like assuming that the abuse happened. And this court case is going to drag on for years and years. There's going to be accusations of like, yeah, satanic abuse, participating in ritual sacrifices, that there's like a secret tunnel system under the school where these kids were taken to. And the case goes nowhere. It lasts.

nearly a decade, that it costs the family of the accused their life savings and legal fees. I think that the owner of the preschool is going to spend a year in prison on trumped up charges. Her son's going to spend like six years in prison. There are zero convictions that come out of it and $15 million spent on this like super long drawn out case that gets a ton of attention and is still going to keep stoking these like

fears and paranoia about what's happening. So, yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (40:52.828)
Was there any sort of in that trial, like was the satanic stuff mixed in or was that just like child abuse?

Mr. Borkavich (40:59.521)
no, it was, it was satanic. Yeah. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (41:00.632)
They thought it was a cult. Yeah. So there's a good research, John. Good. And I like you actually set this up well. We didn't plan. We planned to both research. And then we accidentally, happy accident, overlapped perfectly. But I think you did a great job setting the stage. Cults were still a thing.

Theotokos Appreciator (41:02.984)
Mr. Borkavich (41:07.633)
Thanks, G.

Kim Jung Un (41:27.084)
Like they were very much a thing. They were going down in popularity, I think, by the 80s. But so many people. Right. So and as Tommy pointed out, MK Ultra, people don't trust anything. Sensationalist news is starting to take off because news is starting to be monetized at this point. So this was just ripe to happen.

Mr. Borkavich (41:33.095)
That's such a good point. Yeah, because like Jonestown just happened, right?

Mr. Borkavich (41:50.278)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (41:54.639)
And we'd seen humans have gone through different types of occult paranoia throughout the years, the Salem witch trials and all that. one of the things that I don't like, that I've had to, it's very hard to research this topic because almost everything is written from this.

you know, very empirical post-enlightenment. Tommy, what else did you call it?

Theotokos Appreciator (42:25.544)
secular humanism.

Kim Jung Un (42:27.02)
Yeah, the secular humanist bent where it's the dumb Christians are spiritualizing everything. And I think you did a great job, pointing out that we were in a time that it was just pure chaos. And so you have your normal moms that are like just going to work at the office and, you know, double check finances is sitting there wondering what the heck's happening to my kid at home.

Mr. Borkavich (42:43.271)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (42:56.062)
or not at home, right? But then the LashKey kids grow up and then they start getting involved in Dungeons and Dragons and all these sorts of things, which does have a cultic imagery. We're gonna get into Dungeons and Dragons right now. But you have that happening and then you start factoring in the teen suicide rates, start going up and...

Mr. Borkavich (42:57.755)
Right.

Mr. Borkavich (43:21.287)
you

Kim Jung Un (43:21.518)
These news, the sensationalized news is they're reporting it Dungeons and Dragons and Satan had to deal with this. And heavy metal music. All of these kind of like counter-cultural points of interest for these kids is now what's, the suicide is what's being, there are suicides being blamed on those things rather than a lot of the traumatic upbringing. So there is some irony there that.

were apparently culturally aware of childhood trauma, except no parent wants to admit that they're a horrific parent and emotionally, maybe physically, maybe sexually abused their kid or at least allowed it to happen. And then when the kid commits suicide, when he's a high schooler, it's like, well, he played that D &D game where they were summoning demons.

Theotokos Appreciator (44:00.68)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (44:08.056)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (44:16.967)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (44:17.612)
So I don't mean to sound insensitive, just moving quickly here.

Mr. Borkavich (44:20.837)
No, no, and another thing too is like runaways were like huge during this time. So like, this is a crazy time of like, you know, we talk about the mental health of like teenagers today, but like, like crazy high suicide rates. And there were like tens of thousands of runaways around this time in the seventies. So yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (44:41.042)
Well, when I talk to people who grew up in this era, like almost across the board, what they describe is, first of all, it was illegal to homeschool. Nobody was homeschooling. So like everybody was in school, like all the time. Like, so you go to school, you know, from, you know, eight to four or whatever. And then like, when I talk to people who grew up in this era, they always talk about how they were just on their own.

Mr. Borkavich (44:52.647)
Theotokos Appreciator (45:10.598)
Like, there's just, they didn't have much of a relationship with their parents. Like, they weren't being raised by their parents, they were being raised by the public school. And then even when they were home, it was like, go play at your friend's house, go play outside, whatever. And so, it wasn't even necessarily, I mean, it is bad parenting, but it's like just absentee parenting, seems to be kind of the name of the game.

Mr. Borkavich (45:17.029)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (45:21.813)
and each other.

Mr. Borkavich (45:23.623)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (45:40.131)
Yeah, so as I said, there was like issues in researching and trying to find anything written. So I ended up looking up like Christian responses to Dungeons and Dragons, Christian responses to Pokemon, things like that. And then I'll go ahead and say.

I do listen to the briefing and Albert Moeller just did an the Halloween episode on Friday where he he talked about imagery. I think he takes a very strong stance against

Halloween and anything that could minimize darkness. I understand it. I don't think I have or yeah minimize like, you know the impact of darkness and evil I I don't have a strong personal convictions, but I respect the Cautiousness so like this attitude is still very prevalent today I think what I'll do now is I'll start where we're at time wise is in 2025 and then I'm gonna move backwards because

Mr. Borkavich (46:41.191)
Okay.

Kim Jung Un (46:44.564)
We have very clearly evolved as a society to where we're not necessarily freaked out about Harry Potter as much anymore. Right. A lot of people love Harry Potter. There's books written about, you know, Christian metaphors in Harry Potter. think J.K. Rowling came out of a Christian worldview for the most part.

So she's influenced by that in her writing. Evil's very clearly presented. Pokemon, I think a lot of us have seen the clips of the old church recordings where they're explaining that it's little demons that cast demonic spells at each other. I think we've kind of evolved to realize, OK, it's just cute little critters that love their Pokemon trainer.

They, you you're not killing anything. You're just, you're making, you're knocking out the other Pokemon trainer. And then you get into like Dungeons and Dragons now, which is actually become Dungeons and Dragons and Magic the Gathering were big resurgence right now. They are now considered, I would say the nerdy Christian guys, like main hobbies.

Mr. Borkavich (47:34.949)
Right, right.

Theotokos Appreciator (47:46.856)
Big resurgence.

Mr. Borkavich (47:48.657)
Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (47:56.518)
haha

Kim Jung Un (47:57.013)
If you were not into sports, if you were not into sports, I guarantee you guys that your local, especially your local reform church where you're to have more intellectual type guys, I guarantee you there's a game night that happens at least once a month, maybe twice a month where the moms take the kids and dads get together and play magic or Dungeons and Dragons. It's just a thing. You got any of those at your church, Tommy?

Mr. Borkavich (47:58.095)
You

Mr. Borkavich (48:17.447)
Mm-hmm.

Theotokos Appreciator (48:23.269)
we don't have a standing game night right now, but I do know there's a couple of guys at our church that, that enjoy some D and D.

Kim Jung Un (48:31.468)
Yeah, see? And John and I, here's some more lore for the listeners. John and I actually played Dungeons and Dragons every Sunday night when we were younger. Years, years. I think it was even longer than two years. I mean, we would play for hours. Hours. We would gather at like five o'clock. We would eat something and then we'd play sometimes till like midnight. Yeah. Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (48:36.539)
Hehehe.

Mr. Borkavich (48:42.887)
for like two years. Yeah, for a long time.

Mr. Borkavich (48:50.043)
Yeah, yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (48:56.687)
Yeah, we had some long ones. Yeah, it usually ran till like 10, so it was like three or four hours of playing and just smoking a ton of hookah.

Kim Jung Un (49:02.486)
Yeah, but then there were, yeah, a lot of shisha was burned. But I mean, dude, we would have like the whole, we had that giant dining room table and like the whole thing would be covered with like these elaborate maps and you know, yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (49:12.199)
Mm-hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (49:15.845)
Yeah, it was like 12 feet long.

Theotokos Appreciator (49:17.12)
3D printing has changed the game now, dude. Everybody can make their own stuff.

Mr. Borkavich (49:21.767)
Oh dude, it's like the Renaissance now. Gosh dang it.

Kim Jung Un (49:22.018)
I know.

Kim Jung Un (49:25.87)
That's right. So, and it gets into, I think, the modern Christian stance against them. And I figured a good way to see what a conservative Christian thinks about something is what does God questions have to say? Yeah, and God questions on there, should a Christian play Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh? It's so funny. He says, from a mechanical standpoint, there's nothing inherently moral or immoral about games like Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh.

Mr. Borkavich (49:41.255)
OK, all right.

Kim Jung Un (49:56.079)
He says it's like chess or whatever. This is so funny, few paragraphs down. In immediate non-spiritual terms, the first concern any Christian should have about Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! is actually cost. And then he goes on and talks about how they can be very expensive.

Theotokos Appreciator (50:07.641)
haha

Mr. Borkavich (50:07.959)
Ha

If you have to put it on your credit card, is absolutely a no.

Kim Jung Un (50:15.042)
Yes. And then he moves into the same thing when he talks about Dungeons and Dragons, how enjoying games with friends is not a sin. Games themselves, even RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, are not sin. Sin is an action or thought performed by a human being. So what we do with what we have constitutes whether or not we have sinned. And then he talks about, evil encouraged? Is the theme appropriate? How is the game affecting your life and relationships?

So, you know, same kind of questions you'd ask about Pokemon. Is me getting into Pokemon just destroying my family's budget? Those kinds of things. And so when we would play D &D, I really appreciated our... We never played the bad guys, right? And I think if we were very clear about playing as good actors in the world and we were always fighting evil, trying to preserve justice or something like that.

And I always felt like D &D was a great game too. Are you laughing at just memories?

Mr. Borkavich (51:18.179)
No, no, I'm thinking, well, I'm just, I'm remembering like, so my view of D &D was always as a bunch of Christian dorky 20 year olds. And I remember when I first went on the Reddit for D &D and I realized it's not even that dude. would be like, it would be like, Hey guys, I'm having an issue with one of the, with one of the characters that, that, that plays with us. He just, he just keeps trying to like,

Kim Jung Un (51:32.95)
And you realize they're all gay?

Theotokos Appreciator (51:35.42)
hahahahah

Mr. Borkavich (51:47.666)
have sex with the other female character and it's really uncomfortable and he's always trying to roll charisma checks and she doesn't want him to do that and I'm like ew what's wrong with you people? yeah

Theotokos Appreciator (51:49.266)
Hahaha

Kim Jung Un (51:50.658)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (51:58.861)
Yeah, or the people that are like hobo murderers and they're like trying to just rolling into town, like wanting to kill everything. Yeah, like we didn't deal with any of that, but I think, that wouldn't be accepted at our table. And what's so funny is, cause you think about our table, we were like telling this grand, you know, hours and hours a week story culminated in hundreds of hours of story of good versus evil and all the nuances that come into that. And you know,

Mr. Borkavich (52:22.203)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (52:26.074)
we'd have to deal with like moral questions of what's the best way to handle this. And so like that's what our table was exploring. And then like you said, the game also though facilitates the, you know, weird kinky insert whatever is happening elsewhere. So that's like the modern understanding of D &D. But if you go back in time to the 80s, which...

Mr. Borkavich (52:34.033)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (52:42.523)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (52:53.454)
coming up on 50 years ago, people. If you were born in the 80s, I'm sorry to tell you. And I found a great article from none other than Peter Lightheart.

Mr. Borkavich (52:57.895)
off.

Theotokos Appreciator (52:59.272)
Hehe.

Theotokos Appreciator (53:08.518)
Hey!

Kim Jung Un (53:09.698)
This is actually Lightheart's first publication. It was a pamphlet called The Catechism of the New Age, a response to Dungeons and Dragons, and it came out in 87. Yes, him and George Grant, they're both, but here's why I wanted to look at this and read this.

Mr. Borkavich (53:20.313)
no, he's gonna crap on it, dude.

Mr. Borkavich (53:28.387)
Is this your king, Thomas? Is this your man?

Kim Jung Un (53:31.392)
It's just, but we have to remember this was written.

Theotokos Appreciator (53:33.442)
I like light heart takes. This is a long time ago though too.

Kim Jung Un (53:37.293)
This is a long time ago. And as John pointed out rightly, what they were dealing with was just chaos. And emotions are high. as we know, like crowds, people don't do well when safety, when they don't feel safe. So in his Christian response, the first half is super interesting because he actually goes through and.

Mr. Borkavich (53:37.829)
No, I know, I know.

Kim Jung Un (54:03.682)
very carefully explains what the game is and how it's played and he starts showing you

Mr. Borkavich (54:08.852)
Is this third edition or?

Kim Jung Un (54:12.014)
This was still like advanced D &D. I don't even think second edition was out yet. So yeah, so and they did, and I didn't know this at the time, but like they have definitely PG-13 to the game up. I mean, like he's quoting stuff. Yeah, he's quoting stuff from the monster manual that's like, if you roll a certain thing, like your genitals are hurt from this attack. Yeah, that's in the game. That's in the game.

Mr. Borkavich (54:16.359)
Dang, dude. You have no wonder he hated it.

Mr. Borkavich (54:28.506)
you think so? Like they've kinda...

Mr. Borkavich (54:38.575)
Crazy. Wow. That's wild.

Kim Jung Un (54:41.314)
they would have a lot more, a lot more like occultic imagery that they purposely chose to put into it. And so you're sitting there thinking like, man, okay, you can say, well guys, it's just a game. You can do whatever you want in the game. And it's like, okay, well, I mean, it's just me visiting a satanic cult. I can choose to participate in the cat sacrifice or not. Like, well, it's still happening. It's right there available. So.

Mr. Borkavich (54:46.503)
that's interesting, okay.

Mr. Borkavich (55:06.503)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (55:11.246)
He also he he knows that this is escapism is one of the things when he talks about the Christian response What's funny though He he does say it's obsessive escapism of this sort is virtually equivalent to schizophrenia Yeah

Mr. Borkavich (55:31.495)
That is a challenging take.

Kim Jung Un (55:35.447)
Yeah, but he's also talking about, you know, one of one of the students who had committed suicide and he was very clearly mentally ill. So he's making the claim pretty early on here. I think that it's guys, it's mental illness and emotional issues that are leading to suicides. It's not necessarily Dungeons and Dragons, but at the same time, the people that do are led to play Dungeons and Dragons or

Mr. Borkavich (55:44.487)
Mmm.

Kim Jung Un (56:05.154)
You know, I love metal. This is another one. This was another target. You and I just love the stuff that's hit by the Satanic Panic.

Mr. Borkavich (56:13.233)
Well, we're proof that the coast was clear, you know? There's no way I was gonna touch metal if I thought it was gonna, you know, make me grow horns.

Kim Jung Un (56:17.172)
Mmm, I think so

But what's interesting about metal is even though I love it, and I particularly love black metal. Now I listen to Christian black metal. No, this is the stuff that was like anti, it's like roots are traced back to like anti-Christian. No, no. But there are very good Christian black metal artists, which I think is like the most metal, yeah, the most metal thing you can do.

Mr. Borkavich (56:33.211)
that I think it's African-American metal, Taylor.

Mr. Borkavich (56:40.783)
I like kill switch engage black metal.

Theotokos Appreciator (56:48.624)
for today.

Kim Jung Un (56:52.768)
is take something that was made for Satan and be like, nope, I'm taking this for Jesus.

Theotokos Appreciator (56:52.818)
Black Metal.

Mr. Borkavich (56:59.739)
What's the premier black metal Christian band? Like mortification, death metal, gosh.

Kim Jung Un (57:02.894)
I don't know, dude. Yeah, they're death metal. Horde. Horde is very controversial in the sense that they were, was a clear, it's like the album is Invert the Inverted Cross. Yeah, so Horde, which is H-O-R-D-E, if you want to listen to that. I've been listening to Frost. No, H-O-R-D-E.

Mr. Borkavich (57:15.905)
yeah, okay, yes, yes, yes.

Theotokos Appreciator (57:22.6)
not w-h-o-r-e-d

Mr. Borkavich (57:27.751)
It's spelled the only way it would be spelled.

Kim Jung Un (57:32.815)
I've been listening to a band called Frost Harder, which is an older black metal band from Europe. Hill to Die Upon is an American black metal band that's a little newer. Very cool, very interesting stuff. But all that to say, Satanic Panic. This isn't just Taylor B. Like, here's the sick underground bands I listen to, guys.

Mr. Borkavich (57:58.084)
You

Kim Jung Un (58:00.239)
Satanic Panic, metal's wrapped up in that. And I think that there is something to be said for your average American parent that's like, my kid's listening. Dude, I know what black metal sounds like. And I try to show something to Brandy while we were driving the other day and she's like, this is unintelligible noise. And I'm like, yeah, I like it though.

Mr. Borkavich (58:10.124)
yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (58:21.543)
Well, cause like, and there were legit bands that were like burning churches down in Europe, right? Like Mayhem.

Kim Jung Un (58:26.702)
Yeah, yeah, mayhem, all of that drama. And that was also something that was sensationalized. That goes into like Europe's satanic panic. But it was still a thing. So like you take the, you know, take Manson murders is like this big, wow, he said he's, you know, devil doing the devil's work. And people could be like, well, it wasn't really about Satan. He was just being edgy. It's kind of the same thing in Europe. But it's like you're still like people are still dead. Churches are still burned. There was murders in Europe related to the black metal scene.

Mr. Borkavich (58:35.621)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (58:56.209)
Yeah, and one thing I think we haven't mentioned yet is that for those who don't know, metal has always been kind of reveling in being irreverent. like they always, know, like Black Sabbath is a good example of like, it's meant to be like kind of a play on like, it's an evil thing. It's an inversion of a holy thing, which is why Christian...

Kim Jung Un (59:19.585)
Right.

Mr. Borkavich (59:21.211)
black metal or Christian death metal bands tends to do the opposite. They invert the inversion, which is why Invert the Inverted Cross is such a good freaking album title. But yeah, I...

Kim Jung Un (59:28.78)
Yeah, it's awesome. You're right. And the dude, this goes back to like rock and roll roots in general. It was like it was sexualized. It was very rebellious. It was. Yeah. So the 1950s onward, you have, I think Christians do have real reason to like, you know, at the very least be cautious. And that's what Peter Lightheart, he basically says the Christians should not play Dungeons and Dragons. Now, I wonder if

Mr. Borkavich (59:34.631)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (59:58.413)
He would hold that today. But for example, here's one of the reasons. He says, of the spells, incantations, symbols, and protective measures are genuine occultic techniques. Several spells, for example, instruct the players to draw a protective circle when communicating with demons, a practice used by real witches. Spells often required human blood or flesh. And dude, he's quoting the game here. The spell for a...

Theotokos Appreciator (01:00:17.586)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (01:00:24.558)
I hadn't even pronounced it like cacodemon congregate conjuration Suggests that this is the game by tribute of fresh human blood and the promise of one or more human sacrifices the summoner can bargain with the demon for willing service I want you listeners and fellow co-hosts to imagine you're a suburban mom Who works 40 hours a week? Dad works 50 and you come home from your little accounting job

and see that Timmy's playing Dungeons and Dragons and you open up the newspaper and that's the quote you read. Done, Timmy's not playing Dungeons and Dragons anymore.

Mr. Borkavich (01:01:01.425)
Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:01:02.024)
Well, well, or imagine you're a pastor like Lightheart in the 80s and you've got congregants coming to you saying, hey, should my kids be playing this game? And you research it and this is what you find. Like, I mean, that's pretty.

Mr. Borkavich (01:01:04.455)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (01:01:08.833)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:01:15.621)
Right. And, and I think you want to think about the environment too. Like for me, it was like, I never even, I literally never even thought twice about playing D and D cause was playing with all my buddies. Half of them I went to church with my DM is a freaking worship leader, but like, if it's the eighties and my son is coming to me and I know that he's going to be playing Dungeons and Dragons with a bunch of kids who are going to be listening to Judas priest and laughing about all this weird.

Kim Jung Un (01:01:43.818)
right dude. Heck no.

Mr. Borkavich (01:01:44.485)
Like I'm like, heck no, no, like it's, it's, it's the people that it attracts also. It's the community built around it. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (01:01:49.335)
You nailed it. So you guys have Iron Maiden playing the number of the beast in the background, know, bands like Judas Priest, and you're playing this game with, you know, a monster described as has gone through 666 layers of the demonic abyss. You know? Yeah. This is super interesting, because he says...

Mr. Borkavich (01:01:54.727)
Mm-hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (01:02:06.76)
Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:02:07.782)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (01:02:14.798)
At the very least, anyone familiar with FRP rule books is, that's like, you know, like first person role playing, is learning the terminology of witchcraft and Satanism. More likely, a seed is sown and he's almost imperceptibly drawn into the occult. So this is why I was so happy to have found this source. And it always comes at the tail end of your research time. You find the good stuff. So Lightheart is hyper-educated.

Very articulate, and I think he's being fair when he makes all of these observations. So yes, you have a conservative Presbyterian pastor also writing with another conservative Presbyterian pastor. But I feel like they looked at the game with honest eyes, and this is what they came away from. So yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:02:48.187)
Yeah, yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:03:01.339)
Yeah, and I think you're right, dude. I do think that, you know, cause again, like if we've, I'm going to dork out here a little bit, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who's even played more than fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons. Like maybe edition three, cause four wasn't really liked by anybody, but like edition one was like the wild west. And to think how much...

Kim Jung Un (01:03:22.562)
Yes.

Mr. Borkavich (01:03:24.835)
It's probably gotten a little bit more PC over the 40 plus years that it's been in print.

Kim Jung Un (01:03:31.914)
We never encountered anything like that when we... yeah. We never...

Mr. Borkavich (01:03:35.141)
Nothing at all. Never. Never. And if we did, it would have been really off-putting, for sure. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (01:03:41.465)
That's right. would have 100 % been off putting if we're flipping through the player's handbook. so as you can see, there was a point where they realized, OK, we can't get away with this. There was like a, as listeners might know, D &D publishes books that go along with whatever edition. So it's like expansion books that give new rules and things you can use in the game. And one of these books had a lady who was naked on top of a pedestal.

prepared for sacrifice and it was like some eldritch wizard or something. But imagine being a parent and seeing that dude. So.

Mr. Borkavich (01:04:19.141)
Yeah, yeah. And it really makes me wonder, like, I'd love to know more of the thought process of what led to kind of what you said, the PG-13ification of this, because, like, on the one hand, I'm sure they wanted it to be more family-friendly. They also probably realized that if it was going to be as big as they wanted it to be, they couldn't be, yeah, graphic.

Like, like there's like one thing that I think of all the demonic stuff you talked about, the thing that startled me the most was the mentioning of genitalia. Cause I'm like, there is nothing sexualized in the basic, like the nucleus of D and D. Like it is really not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But back then different, different creature. So yeah, that's wild. And I think that's a very generous read on light heart too. I think I definitely see where he's coming from.

Kim Jung Un (01:04:51.661)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (01:04:57.78)
Nowadays, Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (01:05:10.414)
Yeah, so all that to say, if I had to put a verdict on the satanic panic, I would say I completely understand. I think it sounds like all three of us, if we were in that situation, would have been full blown against it. And then you fast forward a decade, and these little Pokemans come out, and you're already like, you distrust media. And then you see this little cute little thing that's apparently using ability called psychic, right?

See, what the heck is this?

Theotokos Appreciator (01:05:41.778)
Do feel like stuff like Pokemon kinda got the like the double barrel overreaction? Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:05:42.235)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (01:05:46.444)
Yes!

Mr. Borkavich (01:05:48.359)
It did, but it didn't stick, which is the thing. Like Pokemon is probably, okay, it's not as big as it was in like 2001, but it's still.

Kim Jung Un (01:05:55.854)
I hate to break it to you, but it's...

Theotokos Appreciator (01:05:57.104)
I don't know man, my 9 year old nephew's been showing me his Pokemon cards every week at church right now.

Mr. Borkavich (01:06:02.979)
Is it really bigger? But it was so big when we were kids. That's wild. Also very possible.

Kim Jung Un (01:06:03.128)
Dude, Pokemon is bigger than it's ever been. Yeah, it's bigger now. Because now our age, our age plays with it and all the children still. It's like Lego, dude. There's certain things that stuck, yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:06:13.703)
That's true. is a good point. True. Yeah. Now it's cross-generational because Gen X wasn't playing it. Yeah. Minecraft too.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:06:21.298)
Minecraft is another cross-generational.

Kim Jung Un (01:06:21.312)
Yeah. Yeah, Minecraft's another one where Uncle Timmy plays with nephew Timmy, and they both love it. So I know we're like, this was definitely a long episode, so thanks for letting me have my piece. But yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:06:31.525)
Yeah, yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:06:38.565)
No, dude, this was really, really fascinating. It was fun to research, but also really fun to listen to your side of it too. I think just getting the last little bits of, cause I remember my dad used to send me, did your parents ever used to send you the chain emails where you would be like, law enforcement has just found out that.

You know, people are going around and doing this to people's cars. And if they do this, that's a sign that you're going to be abducted or, you know, I was always afraid of like, someone's going to play a sound of a baby crying outside your door. And when you open the door, then they're going to kidnap you and stuff like that. My dad would get those emails and print them out and then like make me sit down and read them. I think like just the, was even when it wasn't like blatantly evil or satanic.

Kim Jung Un (01:07:23.319)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Mr. Borkavich (01:07:33.458)
there was just this hysteria of like, our children are in a, the world that our kids are growing up in is so different from the ones that we did. Like my world was so different from my dad's. And I think like us kind of sharing like, yeah, the parents of our parents were like not emotionally involved at all. Like now they're having kids and they're like, shoot, I don't know what to do with this all of a sudden. So yeah, but I get it, you know?

Kim Jung Un (01:07:59.756)
Yes.

Kim Jung Un (01:08:04.79)
Yep, so little off from church history, but it's still it's still church history. It's still church history. It's just modern history

Mr. Borkavich (01:08:09.913)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:08:13.01)
Well, to maybe kind of try to tie it in a little bit, I wonder if part of what plays into this happening is just the general perspective on the demonic that would be in the theological consensus or majority in America. So if you have a like a dispensational theology, which I would say is the predominant theology in America in the 20th century,

There's this general expectation that Satan's going to get more more powerful over time. so any sort of interaction with a demonic is going to be a really scary thing because there's no... you don't have a theological framework that would say there's any checks and balances to that. That's a runaway train. But a more...

Mr. Borkavich (01:08:46.481)
Mm-hmm.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:09:10.286)
optimistic eschatology is going to have some built-in checks and balances that go? No, you know, Satan is still active, but his power is hindered. He's been defeated in a meaningful, real way by Jesus on the cross. Like, the demonic stuff going on in the Gospels changes after the resurrection. Like, there's—it's just not—

going on at the same level after the resurrection. Like there's a real change in the kind of heavenly host after the resurrection. And so I feel like when it comes to analyzing stuff in our own day in 2025 and onward, there is a reality that there is really, really, really, really, really scary, messed up stuff that goes on behind closed doors and undergrowth.

And every once in a while we get exposed to it. And I think it's important to go into those times where you're exposed to great darkness knowing that Christ is still ruling over all of it. And that Jesus is going to make all things new. I feel that if you don't have that perspective, then it can get very easy to

kind of doom scroll your way through life, to speak. But it doesn't have to be that way. Like we can look evil in the face, we can do what we can to resist evil, to expose darkness with light. But the trajectory of history is good because of what Jesus has accomplished. And I'm not sure that that was the shared consensus of Christians in the 20th century. And so I'm optimistic that

Mr. Borkavich (01:11:08.615)
Mmm bars, heat.

Kim Jung Un (01:11:08.738)
Well...

Theotokos Appreciator (01:11:09.776)
As time goes on, we could respond better.

Kim Jung Un (01:11:12.59)
Late 20th century is also when you saw the massive debate over dispensationalism. that's these people's pastors were being taught hyper dispensationalism at seminary, most likely. And so they go to pastor and he's like, ah, Satan's kingdom is coming, you know? Dude, it actually is 100%. So.

Mr. Borkavich (01:11:27.495)
Mmm.

Mr. Borkavich (01:11:32.273)
This is the left behind era of dispensationalism. No, legit, legit.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:11:35.496)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (01:11:38.891)
It's that's I that's what I'm saying. I appreciate that. We are being very fair to them I I really didn't like every piece of research I found basically was just like and these idiot Christians You know like it gave them no Gave them no benefit of the doubt didn't try to understand where you know, your suburb mom is coming from so

Mr. Borkavich (01:12:00.754)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think you made a great point, Tommy, that I want to reiterate. Just because the difficulty of the satanic panic is like, I'm sure there are lot of people that just felt bamboozled, that just kind of walked away like, crap, I really thought things were different. But here's the thing, there's still reason to panic at the presence of Satan. I know plenty of people who...

were not wrapped up in some mass hysteria, but who have had experiences of like crazy darkness and like really evil stuff. And I wouldn't want to look at them and be like, big dummy, know, don't you understand you're just, this is just a result of cultural factors. It's like, no, you probably were like hit by a demon and that sucks. you know, Christ will, Christ will make him his footstool soon enough, but.

Kim Jung Un (01:12:39.606)
Yes.

Kim Jung Un (01:12:52.631)
Yes.

Mr. Borkavich (01:12:56.775)
Yeah, we're not trying to take away from anyone who's ever experienced the darkness of true evil because we're Christians. We believe in that. That's what Christ was crucified to put to death.

Kim Jung Un (01:13:07.308)
Yeah. I hope that it didn't sound like we were communicating that. OK. That's good. No, no, no. We know it's very real, We know. We know. And if you're dealing with something now, like, shoot us a message. We'll pray for you. You know? Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:13:12.451)
No, I don't think so. I just want to make it super clear.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:13:23.683)
Absolutely, we will. Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:13:24.53)
Well, and to anybody who has had to actually deal with this sort of stuff, like, and maybe has felt like in any way, I don't think we made light of it, but I just want to read James 4-6.

James 4-7 says, submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. And I've always loved that, like that's our position in spiritual warfare is the way that we resist the devil is by drawing near to God. And so if you've come into contact with stuff like, man, we have some shared mutual friends even that I'm thinking, I don't want to name them.

But I can think of two people right now, close friends of mine, who've dealt with night terrors, you know, like on an ongoing basis, you know, before they were Christians, and what, like every night kind of stuff. And then what changed it was prayer. Like even in their sleep, just like reciting the Lord's Prayer.

Mr. Borkavich (01:14:19.495)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (01:14:32.494)
Mmm.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:14:39.154)
drawing near to God in prayer, reciting a portion of a hymn or a psalm. that's what God wants from us is drawing near to Him. And that's actually the most powerful way to resist these things.

Mr. Borkavich (01:14:50.833)
Yeah. Do Tommy.

Kim Jung Un (01:14:51.15)
That's right. And you can draw near to him at your local DND table if you have the right. You have the right themes and such. That's good, Tommy. That's good word.

Mr. Borkavich (01:15:00.635)
Dude, was gonna say, Tommy, I gotta give you the best compliment I can give you. You're such a pastor, bro. And I love that about you, Your heart's just so, so, so there. And I love seeing that. Because it's the three of us, we don't get to have these like tender moments of like, know, spitting some good gospel and getting on a good level with our listeners. But whenever it comes out, it just warms my heart. So, good stuff, man.

Kim Jung Un (01:15:06.562)
Past a Tommy.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:15:06.748)
Ha ha ha ha

Kim Jung Un (01:15:12.046)
Yeah, baby.

Kim Jung Un (01:15:26.8)
Mmm. Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:15:29.381)
spittin' gems. Alright, well...

Kim Jung Un (01:15:31.182)
We gotta stop recording.

Mr. Borkavich (01:15:33.627)
Yeah, we're gonna blow our server or something. Yeah. Okay. All right.

Kim Jung Un (01:15:38.349)
That's how that works.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:15:40.582)
People like the long episodes.

Mr. Borkavich (01:15:43.431)
Yeah, well, hour 15, so we're going to have to pull it. Thanks gang. It's been fun. We'll be back next week. Thanks for listening. Bye.

Kim Jung Un (01:15:51.246)
We'll see you next week. Bye bye.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:15:53.884)
bless you.