Screwtape Updates -- The Fumes of the Enemy

Previous chapters:

• 1 -- The Operations
• 2 -- The Veil Technique
• 3 -- The Fog 
• 4 -- Hard Hearts
• 5 -- Focus on Feelings
• 6 -- Blinding Indignation
• 7 -- Spiritual Inoculation

_____________________________ 

My dear Wormwood,

It is with some delight that I see you have absorbed some trace of my teaching on "spiritual inoculation," as you put it -- though I suspect it was more luck than deep comprehension. We found no stratagem more effective here in Britain than the gentle art of lulling the Church to sleep. It took but a few decades of steady influence to convince them that the Church was no more relevant than a fireplace in midsummer -- quaint, but unnecessary.

Unfortunately, the fumes of the Enemy’s revolting virtue, what they call "love," have lingered in the laws and customs of society, even among those who no longer trouble themselves to believe He exists. The whole European system, like that of your America, still reeks of “love of neighbour.” How gratifying, then, to see the speed with which you have begun to purge that stench from the American air even in this last year.

Here, we found the formalism of worship an invaluable ally. Those who still attended after the War soon learned to regard it as a weekly courtesy to a forgotten tradition. It lingered as a habit one did, rather than anything one truly believed. To be frank, we could hardly have accomplished it without the two great wars. They produced in returning men that delicious sense of futility which renders the soul nearly impervious to faith, leaving the churches as little refuges of sentiment for the gentler sex. As for the young, we managed, for the most part, to prevent them from acquiring the habit at all.

I foresee many opportunities for you to adapt these older stratagems to your own surroundings. The emotionalism of your congregational singing -- which so many of the creatures now mistake for the whole of worship -- serves admirably to lull the larger assemblies into a pleasant stupor. It can, as you note, be delightfully narcotic, a sort of lotus-hymn that leaves them soothed rather than stirred. 

Meanwhile the sermon, when not altogether displaced by singing, has been reduced to those curious lectures they call "TED talks," devoted chiefly to the art of self-improvement. Or they become instruments for promoting the political double-mindedness you are cultivating so well. As for the sacraments, they survive only in some superficial form. Well done, my dear Wormwood, well done.

The discouragement now afflicting those perceptive enough to glimpse your handiwork is a tool not unlike the one we perfected after the War. Then, we taught them to question the Enemy's providence by parading before them the futility of war and suffering. The Church’s present confusion is a more delicate instrument, yet it may serve nearly as well. Use it to persuade the discerning that the Enemy is not truly there at all and that there is no true goodness in the Church. "Deconstruction" -- that delicious offspring of the Church’s own double-mindedness -- can be turned to drive the tender-hearted into despair. And as for those who remain, see that they expend their zeal in denouncing the deserters.

Now, if you can manage -- with my counsel, of course -- to purge the Enemy’s heart from the life of the nation, you may bring America to a far more deplorable pass than anything we have yet achieved in Britain. It matters nothing that large numbers attend your churches so long as their hearts are not true servants of their Master. But take care. Be prudent in the pace at which you dissipate from their laws and culture the fumes of the Enemy. A faint whiff of conscience is excellent camouflage for our deeper work. Remove it too soon and you may awaken those you are so skilfully lulling.

As I have often reminded you, a misguided sense of justice can cloak a most exquisite hatred for one's neighbour. Prudence with the purse can varnish over immense suffering among those conveniently out of sight. Morality itself may be turned to cruelty, provided the sinner is the object. And best of all, they will excuse the vices of their champions in the name of the greater good -- the ends, as they say, justifying the means.

These are all enterprises you already have well underway. Press on, but with discretion. Let as few of the Enemy’s partisans as possible perceive the pattern.

Your affectionate Uncle,
Screwtape