Devils of Democracy: America's Love Affair with Political Demons from the Revolution to Today

From the founding fathers to the rise of Christian nationalism, Devils of Democracy reveals how America's centuries-long obsession with evil has shaped--and endangered--our democracy.

Americans love political demons. From the Revolutionary War to today, in fact, America has been steeped in the demonic and the devilish. Demons populate the spaces of American daily life in ways we might be inclined to dismiss, and they exert a power and a hold over our political imaginations that is, arguably, downright diabolical. Yet as strange as our collective obsession with the interaction between demons and politics might seem, this deep-rooted fascination is a meaningful part of our culture and communities, our history and heritage, our religion and recreation, the personal and the political.

And it may be precisely this obsession that has led us to our present-day political crisis.

While we may be tempted to turn our attention away from the discomfort of demons, author Michael E. Heyes challenges us to a clear-eyed reckoning that requires us to do the opposite. Arguing that we live in a nation that could not exist in its present form without the demonic beliefs that built it, he invites every one of us to join him in confronting spiritual-political demonization in the US head-on, starting with the frightening political point currently confronting our nation, then circling back in time to explore and illuminate the role of demons in US politics throughout our history, drawing connections along the way to our present Trump-era moment and building to the current disturbing demonization of democratic people and institutions, as performed by some groups in the powerful Christian right.

As a country, we need to find our way out of this mess, and an important first step is looking at how we got here. If we are to forge a new path forward, we have no choice but to deal with our demons.

Michael E. Heyes is an associate professor and chair in the Department of Religion at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He received an MA in comparative religion from the University of Washington and a PhD in the history of Christianity from Rice University. He is the author of the monographs Margaret's Monsters and Demons in the USA; an editor of the online, open-access Journal of Gods and Monsters (Texas State University); and the editor of Holy Monsters, Sacred Grotesques: Monstrosity and Religion in Europe and the United States.