“EX-SATANIST” MICHAEL LEEHAN TRIED TO KILL A PREACHER BUT SWEARS HE’S A GOOD GUY NOW

LA preacher Michael Leehan claims that ten years ago Satan ordered him to kill a man. This is the sort of thing that hurts your credibility in most rooms, but Leehan likes to tell the story anyway. Different strokes.

He also claims he was a Satanist back then, although it sounds to me more like he was communing with the gods of psilocybin.  Or maybe the spirit of American capitalism, given how lucrative the “ex-Satanist” speaking circuit seems to be.

Yes, Michael Leehan is one of those alleged reformed Satanists who found Jesus. He even wrote a book about it, Ascent From Darkness. Which I believe is also the title of a Star Trek two-parter.

But it’s not Leehan’s theology that scares me. It turns out the real demons that people like Michael Leehan summon are social ones. And it’ll take more than a wing and a prayer to put them back down again.

“Well shit.”

Anti-Satanist conspiracy assholes are a hobby of mine, but I’d never heard of Leehan before. Then Satanic Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves linked to a Longview News-Journal story about him two weeks ago and it caught my eye.

(That’s the city of Longview, Texas, btw. The town motto: “The Real East Texas.”  I guess that focus grouped better than “Fake East Texas.”)

In his book, Leehan claims he became a Satanist after getting extra pissy at god one day. (This is why people say never go to bed angry.) The blog God Reports breaks it down:

“One Saturday afternoon as he sat alone on his red corduroy couch, he went over the edge. ‘Satan, come into my life,'” [Leehan said]. At that moment he felt an invasive power surge with loathsome and perverted thoughts”

I imagine it was the red corduroy couch that did it. I’m filled with loathsome and perverted power just thinking about it.

Leehan also says that he used to cut himself “to show his allegiance to Satan” and chatted with the ghost of Doors vocalist Jim Morrison. I know people are strange when you’re a stranger, but this is overdoing it.

Then in 2007, Satan ordered Leehan to go kill a pastor in Oklahoma City. It’s lucky this has been such a credible story so far, or I might start feeling skeptical about this part.

Mike bought himself a gun and went down to the church, apparently with no better plan in mind than that. Luckily he converted to Jesus on the way and canned the whole plot, so, you know, phew, right?

Now he preaches about “spiritual warfare,” the psychedelic fundy idea that demons and witches are attacking Christians with black magic and mind bullets (or whatever) every day. An idea that dates all the way back to decrepit European superstitions about witchcraft and Satanic covens.

“Just pretend I’m not here.”

The infamous 15th century German witch hunters manual Malleus Maleficarum spends its first two chapters assuring readers that the devil and his servants assault them with regularity:

“We learn from the Holy Scriptures of the disasters which fell upon Job, how fire fell from heaven and violent wind threw down the four corners of a house. The devil by himself was able to bring about all these disasters.”

Normal people consider these ideas archaic, but folks like Michael Leehan peddle them to contemporary audiences with eager cash.

Leehan is an obvious liar, of course, and never was a Satanist. He may have cut himself and yelled at Jim Morrison, but I’d wager the only spirits he contacted came in bottles.

So why do people believe him? Well, just take a gander at his Twitter feed. Not much there about god, but plenty about Trump, Hillary Clinton, FBI memos, and “the deep state.”

“We are losing our country to illegal aliens, welfare entitlers, and non-Christians,” he warns in one Twitter-based hallucination.

“Don’t listen to liberals, Satan’s servants” reads another.

It’s not a coincidence that far-right politics, conspiracy think, and “spiritual warfare” go hand in hand and hand. Because any crazy shit starts to sound fair if you think you’re fighting the devil. Especially if it’s shit that tells you what you already want to hear.

Given that we know he owns a firearm, maybe it’s lucky that Leehan only seems to want to battle Satan and Hillary via Twitter. But he’s pushing this stuff to audiences which might contain even less stable people than himself.

Me, I don’t like the idea of Michael Leehan or anybody rolling the dice with that kind of incitement. But I’m just “Satan’s servant,” so what do I know?

This is fine.