This has come up at least twice, so I thought I’d explain, for the benefit of people who haven’t read the essays to which Michael linked, how Warnke so dramatically influenced the American Christian view of Halloween that even those who have never heard his name have been the unhappy beneficiaries.

Consider—apart from an essay I wrote in the fourth grade, I have not had much direct contact with Thomas Edison. Some of you know even less about the man. And yet his work permeates our society in the form of the electric light bulb. There are people all around the world who benefit from his invention who have never heard his name.

Similarly, there are philosophers whose work influenced those who wrote our nation’s founding documents, and while there are an amazing number of people who live in America who don’t know much about those documents, there are even more who have no awareness of those philosophers who influenced them.

My children have never heard the name Mike Warnke, but I have. More importantly, my parents have. They used to celebrate Halloween when I was very, very young, but then stopped. We hid out at local mini-golf courses or church functions for years, and why? They wouldn’t have said it was because Mike Warnke told them too, but clearly his story influenced and entire generation of church leaders, who then developed all of these alternatives we see today. Having connected people with the past, Mike Warnke could even be completely discredited and removed from the loop, but by then the damage was done. People who had never even heard his name had seen the history and enough of it turned out to be real to survive Warnke’s discrediting.

It is my opinion that roughly 5% of the church who now disdain Halloween would have done so in the absence of Warnke’s story. I can say this without feeling that I’m over-stating his influence, because I know for a fact that his influence reached halfway around the world. My family was in the Philippine Islands when we first came cross a Warnke tape; that’s how popular he was among certain groups in his hey-day.

All of this would be more or less beside the point, in somewhat the category of drinking or smoking or other issue that have little to do with daily life, except that the nature of Warnke’s story led to more than just a disdain of Halloween, it led to a direct association of Halloween with the worst sort of anti-Christian philosophy in the minds of those who heard the stories or read the books. If I think that you’re sinning by drinking, after all, than the worst I can reasonably say is that you’re disregarding Paul’s instructions for considering a weaker brother. But I have been told to my face that trick-or-treating is tantamount to worshipping satan, and that’s no laughing matter.

I know someone who just this year has decided that he doesn’t want to participate in Halloween, for religious reasons. I’ll freely admit that I react to that far more strongly than I do many other possible revelations. You have suddenly decided drinking is wrong? Fine. Smoking? Sure, I can see it. But by choosing to associate the American holiday of Halloween with devil-worship, I truly and honestly believe that you are entertaining a dangerous mindset and run the serious risk of embarrassing the body of Christ.

In other words, I over-react precisely because I cannot drive down a road in north Dallas without seeing a sign on a church building which causes people to laugh at Christians.

If you don’t want to participate in Halloween because you don’t like candy, or because you’re too old to dress up, or just don’t like holidays, that’s fine. But to claim that Halloween celebrates pagan rituals and promotes devil worship is beyond stupid, and to think that belief has nothing whatsoever with Mike Warnke is naive at best.

Not that I have strong feelings on the matter. :-)