I'm reading a riveting memoir of a woman's immersion into Fundamentalist faith, and her decision twenty years later to leave it behind. It's called, This Dark World, a Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost, by Carolyn S. Briggs (published by Bloomsbury, NY, 2002). I thought some might enjoy reading the following on pages 190, and 191:
We asked God to make our babies and toddlers righteous soldiers of the cross, stroking their little shoulders and faces as we prayed aloud. We asked God to protect them from Satan. Sometimes we would go through room by room of our homes, casting out any evil spirits in the name of Jesus. We stood in our children's bedrooms, letting our hands fall upon toys and dolls as we prayed, especially any toys that could attract demons. Somebody always knew somebody who had seen a Cabbage Patch doll dance across a sleeping child's bed. The Smurfs made the women in the church nervous after a report in a national Christian newsletter had dug up dirt on them. Their blue color was an indication that the Smurfs were the dead walking, soulless little zombies, hardly appropriate entertainment for our Christian children. . . . And later that night, I threw away a Smurf coloring book I found in Joshua's closet, just in case.
And the Witnesses thought they were the only ones...