I don’t watch a lot of TV, but it seems I’ve barely been able to sit down over the last week without seeing a trailer for The Exorcism. This programme went out late on Thursday night accompanied by many warnings that it was for adults only and may contain material that some viewers would find disturbing. Until I started watching I’d been planning an early night. The sleeping would have been considerably more entertaining. I’m not quite sure what Channel 4 were expecting with this show. Were they really hoping that someone possessed by Satan himself was going to sign up, go though several weeks of tests and then just walk into the studio? Deliverance ministry is something that requires much discernment and, I would have thought, a swift resolution when prompted by the Holy Spirit. Clearly I’m in no position to judge whether Channel 4’s “test subject” had a genuine problem with spiritual oppression, but you’d have thought any one of the many clergy and other church figures involved could have told the producers that they were never going to get the drama they were hoping for. There was no explanation given as to the nature of spiritual powers, and host Krishnan Guru-Murthy continuously gave the impression that they were dealing with the devil. As any theologian could have told them, the devil (unlike God) is not omnipresent, and probably has better things to do. I would imagine that there probably is some kind of occult ritual that might summon him, which might have made for a more dramatic exorcism, but I wouldn’t trust any Christian minister who agreed to be past of such an “experiment”.

Sorry. Rant over. For what it’s worth, my own experience took two people about an hour and a half, and was far from that calm.