Here we are in the 21st century and there are still people who are so ignorant that they think a little boy’s autism is demonic possession :

Medical examiners ruled the death of an 8-year-old autistic boy a homicide after an autopsy showed he was asphyxiated during a church service in which participants held him down while praying to expel “evil demons” they believed caused his disorder.
. . .
The minister who led the prayer service at the Faith Temple Church of Apostolic Faith has been in police custody since the weekend. It was the ninth service conducted for the boy over a three-week period in the now shut storefront church.

An official at the church said the 5 foot 7, 150-pound minister sprawled across the boy Friday night “to keep him from hitting his head on the floor, because he was bucking.”
. . .
Terrance’s father said in a telephone interview that when he saw his son’s body in the ambulance Friday night, there were bruises on his arms and he was told there was skin under the boy’s fingernails, which he took as signs that Terrance had struggled.

“It’s like he was fighting for his life,” said Terrance Cottrell Sr.

Now I’m sure that autism can be incredibly hard for a parent to deal with. The frustration can probably lead to someone taking some pretty desperate steps. But this goes far and beyond that. Like Christian Scientists who would withhold medicine from their children in favor of prayer, this is child abuse. Fellow blogger Dwight Meredith, who has chronicled his own son’s battle with autism on his blog P.L.A., makes an important point about the overly-religious views of autism :

If Torrance Cantrell died as the result of intentional cruelty on the part of the members of the Faith Temple Apostolic Church (and I very much doubt that is the case), them they richly deserve whatever fate awaits them both at the hands of justice system and upon the judgment of God.

I suspect, however, that the church members sincerely believed that Torrance was inhabited by evil spirits and that the Bible commanded the methods used to drive those spirits out. That belief is no justification for harming a little boy.

Torrance Cantrell died in Milwaukee in 2003 not in the Salem of 1692. Autism is a neurological condition. It results from a defect in the functioning of the brain, not the soul. There is really no excuse for a group of adults to restrain a child and then take turns beating and whipping him. Only a seriously twisted view of God can possibly begin to justify such actions.

I once had a fundamentalist Christian friend and co-worker tell me that Bobby?s autism was God?s way of drawing me closer to Him. I was repulsed by that idea. I would want no relationship with such a God. Any God who would sanction the beating and whipping of a little boy is not worthy of worship.