Satanic Ritual Abuse and Determinate Meaning: A Response to Professor Ellis

Abstract

Ellis’ argument that the process of “legend ostension” may, in itself, create its own “reality” is well taken and ought to be cautionary. In the current SRA controversy, it is possible that a variety of legend ostension, fed by the fires of the media, over-anxious authorities and mass panic, has at times helped in creating the events of which they speak. In our zeal to interpret a “text” or a series of accounts in ways which privilege our own expectations and preconceptions, the lives of families and individuals can be destroyed. The world is full of suffering and evil; Satan is “real,” but in the current SRA controversy, the Christian community has at times responded by giving the powers of darkness more than their due thus adding to the world's suffering and evil.