The Satan Seller Introduction (to the blog series)

Our next book is going to be the 1972 “memoir” The Satan Seller by Mike Warnke…with David Balsiger and Les Jones. I’ve chosen this book for a few reasons.

The primary reason I’m choosing this book is that it’s the first domino in the debacle that will be called “The Satanic Panic.” We know the Satanic Panic from the 1980s and 90s; but the origins of it go back to the 1970s.

During the 1970s a few things come together to create this panic that would sweep through the English-speaking world. The sexual revolution is one, I don’t have the expertise to really speak on the causes of the revolution, but I can write about the effect—women wanting to work…well not work, no one wants to work. They wanted autonomy and to break the chain of having to be considered a housewife. Once they left the house in pursuit of their own lives, someone needed to watch the kids and Christian men in 1970s America would rather be damned than raise their own children. The response was to scream about how women were forsaking their Donna Reed role. However, that would not be enough to get them back in the home, just not wanting women to work wasn’t enough…so the conservative backlash needed to create some way to deny agency. Women’s liberation in the 1970s was now part of a “plot.”

Concurrently we see the rise of the televangelist. The fire and brimstone preacher is not a new thing; you can go back to Girolamo Savonarola in the 15^th century for a famous one of these; but the reach of these individuals was only as far as their voices could be carried. As technology became better the FCC opened broadcast frequencies for purchase. One group of people that had money and a purpose were Christian fundamentalist preachers looking to spread their message. People like Pat Robertson, Bob Larson, and Jim Bakker; the Trinity Broadcast Network and the Christian Broadcast Network with their flagship show “the 700 Club.” Through these broadcasts a radical and extreme version of Christianity would get promoted. This version was end-times are upon us, the UN is going to invade, and homosexuality is a curse from god. The doomsday eschatology was already established, and they could easily slip in “the adversary” to frighten their followers.

This is where Mike Warnke comes in. One of the problems that conspiracy theorists face is that they never get anyone from the inside. There’s never been a “confessions of an Illuminatus;” that wasn’t a prank or an outright lie. The book that we are going to discuss is an example of someone who is claiming that he was a leader in an international Satanic Cabal of drug traffickers and child murderers.

The difference between Warnke’s book and something like Michelle Remembers; is the latter is the story of a survivor. The survivor story is compelling, but it doesn’t offer anything that the audience doesn’t already know—Jesus saves. Warnke’s book provides an identity to a nebulous enemy that everyone is so sure exists but there’s never been any specific person that was that enemy. Warnke provided that.

And it was all a lie.

I debated whether I even wanted to do this book because Warnke was exposed as a fraud. An investigation by Cornerstone Magazine; a Christian magazine who has every reason to want Warnke to be telling the truth—would reveal that nothing in this book could be substantiated in fact most the claims in the book are impossible because Warnke was somewhere else at the time. However, this book set a template for what a Satanic priest, organization, and ritual would look like for any of the fraudsters that followed. The book was so popular that Warnke would tour giving talks and doing his stand-up routine. He would appear on the Christian Teen show “Fire by Nite” and be profiled as an expert on 20/20.

According to Cornerstone Magazine, “The Satan seller has been responsible, more than any other single volume in the Christian Market, for promoting the current nationwide ‘Satanism scare’.”

This speculation, if true, means that Warnke’s book killed people, put people in prison (some of whom are still in prison), and ruined lives. This is not to mention the panic that it caused in the world as people cowered in fear over something that did not exist.

I’ve decided to read the book because it is so pivotal to the Satanic Panic that it is worth it to see what’s inside. I’ll be referencing the Cornerstone investigation throughout since it’s going to save me a bunch of time in research…unlike the Webster book which required finding obscure French history books.

For people new to this blog—welcome. A couple of informational things first. I’m using the above linked PDF that I found on Archive.org (which I’ve just relinked here). Each week I’ll have the page numbers of the section I’m reading, but I’m not using the numbers in the book rather the PDF page numbers. I’ll post a few reminders about that throughout the entire thing.

Next week, we will begin with page 1 of “The Satan Seller.”