Where does one begin to discuss the actions of Mayor Carolyn Risher of Inglis, Florida? She is the public official who, last Halloween night, used official stationary to write a proclamation banning Satan from her town. Her story appeared in the St. Petersburg Times in November, 2001, and recently made the AP wire when the American Civil Liberties Union announced that it would challenge the ban.

There is a legal angle to the story. As the ACLU is sure to point out, the use of government offices and pubic funds to promote religion is a clear violation of the establishment clause of the Constitution, and potentially of the free exercise clause as well. There is also an historical angle. Risher's attempt to ban Satan falls within a long and well-documented tradition of attempting to cleanse communities of evil. Though it has not blossomed into anything like Salem's witch trials of 1692, it seems to reflect a remarkably similar worldview. The theological angle, however, places Risher in the middle of a recurring tendency in American society, that appears to be on the rise.

A passage from Risher's proclamation reads: "Be it known from this day forward that Satan, ruler of darkness, giver of evil, destroyer of what is good and just, is not now, nor ever again will be, a part of this town of Inglis. Satan is hereby declared powerless, no longer ruling over, nor influencing, our citizens." By placing copies of the document in "hollowed-out fence posts placed at the four entrances to the town," Risher hoped to chase from her town the cause of "division, animosity, hate, confusion, ungodly acts on our youth, and discord among our friends and loved ones."

One cannot fault Risher's motives. St. Petersburg Times reporter Alex Leary tell us that Risher and Town Clerk Sally McCranie, who also signed the proclamation, acted not in response to one incident, but out of "an overall sense of concern" sparked by drunken drivers, molestation, stealing, and an overabundance of children who dress in black and paint their faces white. Who wouldn't want their community to be united, charitable, loving, of clear mind, populated by godly-acting children and harmonious families, and free of drunk drivers, child molesters, and the fashion challenged?

Risher does go awry, however, and leads her community into danger on two fronts. First, by issuing such a proclamation she appears to recognize no distinction between her will and the divine will. Second, in the spirit and the letter of her work she associates evil and sin solely with Satan, and moves forward on the assumption that evil and sin are, somehow, external to our communities and to our humanity.

On both of these mistakes Reinhold Niebuhr is particularly compelling. In his classic The Nature and Destiny of Man, Niebuhr seems, at points, to be speaking directly to Mayor Risher. Regarding her first mistake, he writes, "When the self mistakes its standards for God's standards it is naturally inclined to attribute the very essence of evil to non-conformists." This is not to say that "non-conformists" are misunderstood innocents -- they may, in fact, be very guilty -- but rather to deny our standards the status of infallibility and divine sanction. These standards are, after all, formulated in history by a fallen humanity. Of the second mistake Niebuhr writes, "The polemic use of the symbol [of the Anti-Christ] obscures the fact that the ultimate evil might be not the denial, but the corruption of the ultimate truth." If the problem of evil could be solved as easily as posting notices for Satan, evil would likely have ceased to be a problem long ago. What makes the problem so difficult is that good and evil are not so easily distinguished. Niebuhr warns, as Paul does, that the devil often comes disguised as an angel of light.

There is a danger in actions like those taken by Carolyn Risher that legal opposition will ignore. That danger also resides in George W. Bush's simple, though instantly classic, depiction of the current geo-political landscape. By convincing ourselves that evil is external to us, and that we are the doers of God's will, we take a giant step toward avoiding thorough consideration of the potential for good and evil in our own actions. Does such a recognition necessarily hinder efforts to attain a more just domestic and international society? Does it, as Mayor Risher might argue, give Satan free reign? No. It merely, hopefully, leavens international, communal, and personal relationships with an awareness that now we see as through a glass darkly.

- Jonathan Ebel is the managing editor of Sightings, and a doctoral candidate in the history of Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School.