SCARY VICAR

STOP MONKEYING ABOUT

In March 2003 Logan gets a bee in his bonnet over Evolution and publicly attacks Darwin's Theory of Evolution, insulting a number of scientific materialists who write in to their local paper to complain. Like all full- blown fundamentalists Kevin Logan refuses to believe in Natural Selection because it clearly takes control out of 'god's' hands. During the early years of this century American fundamentalists began a massive campaign to stop the teaching of Evolution in schools and replace it with something they call 'Creationism'. In America some fundamentalist teachers have been fired because of a refusal to teach Evolution as per the standard syllabus. Logan is taken to task by several qualified scientists who point out that he is talking utter rubbish.

CAMPAIGNS FOR CENSORSHIP
In August 1997: Kevin Logan joins with two other local Vicars Richard Priestly and Michael Ratcliffe to campaign to stop a public performance by the Psychic James Byrne and obtain a ban on other psychics doing the same thing in future in the locality. This straightforward attempt at censoring freedom of speech and choice fails. The Council's Leisure services committee allows the psychic exhibition to go ahead.

FLOGS OFF CHURCH WINDOWS
In March 2001 Logan's diocese stops him from selling eight stained-glass windows of his church to American and Japanese companies for approximately 10,000.00 each. The local authority fills in with some grant funding but local councillors are up in arms and wants the 55,000.00 to be spent in the general community, 'not just for people who go to church'.

NOT IN MY CHURCH!
In December 2005: Logan signs his name to the notorious homo-phobic letter sent to the Anglican House of Bishops decrying the marrying of same-sex couples.

BAPTIST-ANGLICAN AXIS
In January 2005: Logan's lean towards fundamentalism continues as he arranges for his own Anglican church and the local Baptist church to merge.

'They feel the move is a sign of things to come among Hyndburn churches and were already in talks with two other churches about forming closer ties.

TURN THE OTHER CHEEK
Unfortunately Kevin Logan's persuasiveness didn't seem to win over Edward collins, a thief whom Logan tried to rehabilitate. Collins ended up conning Logan out of nearly £1000.00 and in January 2006 received a 13 month jail sentence for six offences of deception.

KEVIN MEETS MARY
In July 1990 one of the notorious Satan Seminars is held in the Wirral. The seminar titled: The Effects of the Occult on Society is hosted  by the National Viewers & Listeners  Association  at  the Wirral Christian Centre, Birkenhead. Few people know that Mary Whitehouse's NVALA was a Christian outreach. The speakers at this seminar were Maureen Davies and  Kevin Logan. During the seminar Davies and Logan made claims that an SRA case had been discovered by police in Liverpool, nearby, but then had to retract their false allegation as people in the audience corrected them. The 'satanic' group was actually a Christian Church House group members of which turned out to be wholly innocent of any crime.

MIND-BENDERS OKAY In June 1997: Kevin Logan announces the start of an Alpha Group he has arranged to hold in his church. The Alpha Course is a controversial American indoctrination method used by fundamentalists to get converts to Christianity. Based on pyramid selling techniques it is highly successful in developing a cell of fundamentalist activists in any area where it is held. The Catholic church sees The Alpha Course as highly suspicious and has banned it from all of their church buildings worldwide. It normally works through the 'unorthodox' Christian fundamentalist groups (Baptists Pentecostals etc) but here we see Logan opening his Anglican Church for the purpose - a clear sign of his fundamentalist credentials.

VANDAL VICAR
In April 1997 local newspaper reports 'A vicar took the law into his own hands over Sunday trading by climbing up a ladder and pulling down a banner outside Asda supermarket. The Reverend Kevin Logan took his ladder to the superstore in the town to remove the banner advertising sunday trading.' Today few people remember the uproar before the law was changed to allow ordinary people (Christian and non-Christian) to go out and spend their money wherever they wanted on a Sunday but they get a reminder every year when Jews atheists and Moslems turn up at their local supermarket on Easter day and are shocked to find every store completely shut up in deference to the 8% of the population who still go to church! Most people thought Logan's actions extreme in Accrington , a hotbed of multicultural activity, then, and it seems even more irrational now; but do they think the same about his claims over the Harry Potter books?

BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS: Kevin Logan was born in 1943. He used to be a journalist and a member of the NUJ. In fact Logan made many media contacts when working for the coal board during the late 1960s and early 1970's where he helped put together Coal News, the house magazine and worked freelance for the Observer. He lived a regular life until the age of 28 when he was introduced to God by a work colleague and became born-again. He began his ecclesiastical training at Oak Hill College in 1973 but had a low profile until he became the vicar of St John's Great Harwood, Lancs in 1982 and left that post in 1991 when he became the Vicar of Christ Church, Accrington where he now resides. He jumped on the Satanic Myth bandwagon in 1987.

...AND THERE'S MORE; LOT'S, LOT'S MORE

He is no stranger to publicity.
Some have called him the Church's answer to Barnum and Bailey.
His earlier exploits included an attempt to erect a 25 feet high concrete crucifix upon Pendle Hill (reputed haunt of the  17c Lancaster Witches) and his claim that all out of work teenagers in and around Blackburn were becoming involved in the occult due to having too much time on their hands!

These and many other exploits such as his highly publicised attempt to auction off the stained glass windows of his church in order to fund repairs, have been well recorded both in the national and local press and broadcast over TV and Radio. His timing is impeccable and he appears to have a natural skill in spotting a new wave of controversy. 

But Logan is no stranger to bending the truth either. One of his promotional exploits involved a claim that 87% of children polled in a survey of 300 Blackburn schoolchildren had had some contact with the occult. This got him big headlines. What Logan didn't say was that his survey had concluded as evidence of 'occult contact' an interest in fantasy games, heavy metal music and watching horror movies/videos. Which kid doesn't have an Xbox!

During November 1988 Logan gave an interview on the radio 4 Today programme and claimed that there had been a ritual murder. The chief constable of Lancashire investigated and reported that Logan had revised his claims. He was not referring to a recent murder, nor indeed one that occured in Pendle, but rather the murders committed by Paul Bostock in Leicestershire during 1986!

When asked to clarify the Lancashire Police said that the 'ritual murder' Logan spoke of as being 'here' (in Pendle) actually occured in Leicester in 1986! So the case which Logan used as proof that ritual killings were being undertaken in the U.K.in 1988 was the Paul Bostock case prosecuted at Leicester Crown Court in 1986. Bostock knifed a 33 year old woman to death on a canal towpath in 1983 when he was 16 years old but was not caught even though questioned by the police. He killed again three years later by stabbing 21 year old Amanda Weedon on a path beside a cemetery in Leicester. He had no connections with any of his victims. There were no occult rites or ceremonies involved. Logan obviously must really believe that Satanists do these things - his problem is that the facts say they dont! It is this religion-on-religion hatefulness which humanists have highlighted as the source of the conflict which has held back the evolution of mankind since the Dark Ages.

At this point an independent comment by Peter Ward, Barrister and Lecturer in Law, might be helpful:

When critics demanded dates , names and details of these claimed cases which according to Kevin Logan prove that 'occultism' is a danger it usually boils down to a handful of old crimes which have little if any relevance! (Click here to see the Complete list of 'ritual crimes' Kevin Logan used to back up his campaign and crucial facts of each case which were 'inadvertently' left out)

It was cases like those that Logan put into his book Paganism and The Occult (Published by Kingsway Religious tracts, Eastbourne).   Logan admitted in the notes section that most of the cases he researched for his book had gone into the 'Dossier' which was given to the late MP Geoffrey Dickens and upon which he in turn based his sensational announcement in Parliament.    In the foreword to his book  Logan boasts that he was instrumental in providing information on the occult which was featured in Geoffrey Dicken's first statement on SRA in parliament on 15 April 1988.

It was this type of prejudiced and largely false scaremongering, which fanned the flames of the Myth of Satanic Ritual Child Abuse and destroyed the lives of 84 children and their innocent parents during the 1988-1995 scare.

After that debacle Logan experienced first hand evidence of the damage that unsubstantiated evil allegations can cause because Caroline Marchant a mentally unstable 'fantasist and 'victim imposter' committed suicide whilst in his home.

The true story of poor Caroline's demise had nothing to do with Satanism but was effectively a result of her being used as a pawn in this religious war by Christian fundamentalists.  Her true story was covered by the Independent on Sunday newspaper on 30th December 1990 and titled ' A RITUAL FABRICATION  and, courtesy of the SAFF you can read all about it here:  https://saff.nfshost.com/marchant.htm

How on earth Logan has the gall to begin to use the very same tactics again today by starting a completely unnecessary campaign against Harry Potter books on the irrational fear that children are at risk from the occult if they read any of J K Rowling's fiction is utterly beyond the comprehension of any responsible person who lived through those times.

Kevin Logan may look affable and he may talk in measured whispers of kindly interest but his track record is plain for everyone to see. In the 'disguise' of a boring and staid Anglican Vicar this man's ability to 'spin' makes him highly controversial because as a renegade hack himself, he knows exactly how to press the media's buttons. Now The Witchfinder General Logan is back again, stirring the pot for the umpteenth time,  relying on the unquestioning British media to do his sectarian dirty work for him.

Logan's main purpose appears to be to advance Christianity by any means fair or foul. He is a sectarian killjoy who exaggerates the irrational fears of those of weaker intellect by massaging their paranoia and misrepresenting the religious beliefs of non-Christians in order to disseminate religious propaganda which defames the beliefs of others. This could very well be illegal under the new Incitement To Religious Hatred Act.

In Talibanesque style Kevin Logan has set himself up in competition with anything which is not Holy Writ. Had he not ensconced himself in the disguise of a boring old cardigan wearing Anglican, he would be seen for what he is - a fire-and-brimstone, bible-thumping, tent-preacher who constantly sticks his nose into other people's business to further his hard-line brand of Christianity. But, as the Vicar of Christ-Church, Accrington - he is actually taken seriously by many unsuspecting people. Truly a modern Witchfinder General with all the bigotry, intolerance, and unfairness that entails. You can make up your own mind from what follows:

CHRONOLOGY OF A SCARE

APRIL 16th 1988: The Northern Echo reports that Geoffrey Dickens MP had obtained a 'Dossier' which, it is promised, will soon be sent to the Home Secretary. Later this year the Reverend Kevin Logan publishes his book "Paganism and the Occult - a manifesto for Christian Action".  Under Notes, Logan states that much of the information contained in his book was given directly to Dickens to form part of his Dossier. The much acclaimed dossier is held as proof of the SRA allegations by Dickens but WILL NEVER be presented to the Home Secretary because, when it has outlived it's usefulness this 'dossier' is somehow lost in the post before anyone can see or challenge it's conclusions!

SEPTEMBER 19th 1988: Radio 4's TODAY programme carries interview with Reverend Kevin Logan who made the now usual fundamentalist statements about evidence of child sacrifice. When the interviewer demanded to be told about an actual case Logan said that there had been ritual murders 'here'. The Chief Constable of Lancaster investigated and stated

Kevin Logan is no stranger to exaggeration and distortion. He made headlines during 1986 by publishing the results of a questionnaire he conducted with 300 school children. The outcome, he said, was that 87% of these children SAID THEY HAD BEEN INVOLVED WITH THE OCCULT. Nobody cared to enquire further. Had they done so they would have seen that the questionnaire defined fantasy games and horror movies as being involvement in the 'occult'. I ask you! What teenager DOESN'T play fantasy games and watch horror movies?

OCTOBER 30th 1988: ITN news carry a piece containing the most incredibly hysterical comments and allegations by fundamentalists. The piece included interviews with Dianne Core and a Cheshire Mother whose son tried to stab her.  Her son was diagnosed by a fundamentalist psychiatrist as possessed by the devil!  The true story is that the Social Services did not think there was any need for a psychiatric report and the mother INSISTED upon one. When the psychiatric report came through its conclusions did not support her views and so she termed the report worthless. Later , after contacting Maureen Davis' a director of the Christian REACHOUT Trust, (a group of which Kevin Logan was then a co-director) she was directed to a fundamentalist psychiatrist who believes that possession by the devil is a certainty in some psychiatric cases. Only then did the mother become satisfied. She had found THE EXCUSE which she needed to explain her son's behaviour to onlookers; an excuse which absolved her from any blame. The article also includes contributions from Kevin Logan. The whole premise of the piece was that it was easy for children to obtain occult items and books. Note carefully that these are the exact same claims Logan is making today with his ridiculous 'Harry Potter is a gateway to the occult' allegations (see below).

In the Autumn of 1988 Kevin Logan, then at St Johns Church Blackburn, publishes his book "PAGANISM AND THE OCCULT - a Manifesto for Christian Action" This treatise, published by an exclusively Christian publisher (Kingsway) is clearly a biased fundamentalist polemic designed to defame alternative beliefs. It is clearly not independent. It is in fact thoroughly biased. Its methods of research are scientifically untrustworthy.  Almost every page is replete with chapter-and-verse quotations from the Christian bible; yet it's bankrupt conclusions are taken on board and used by the media and others in a general public debate. In the book Logan admits that he was instrumental in providing information on the occult which was featured in Dicken's infamous April 1988 statement in parliament. Dickens, Logan and Core pass information between them in their campaign against Neo-Pagans.

By May 1990, based largely on Kevin Logan's book and inflamatory comments the idea became current that Children had been Killed in Satanic Rites. As we all now know that was completely untrue yet in 'The See' religious magazine we find an interview with Kevin Logan which is couched in the most unequivocal language.

Children killed in Satanism... NOT!

'Rodney Nicholson has been talking to the Reverend Kevin Logan Vicar of St Johns, Great Harwood, about a horrific subject which has recently hit the news. The murder and sacrifice of newborn babies would seem to belong more to horror videos than to this magazine. Yet evidence has come to light that such atrocities are taking place in Britain today, evidence so strong that the NSPCC, the Police and the Social Services are investigating cases of alleged child sacrifice. The Reverend Kevin Logan made these discoveries when researching for his book Paganism and the Occult , and he, with others, set up an Occult help-line. This together with television discussion programmes in which he has taken part, as well as Roger Cook's report on ITV brought to light instances of Satanists using children for sex abuse,, cruelty and even sacrifice. ........Kevin Logan and a solicitor are now dealing with 'hard evidence' from twelve women who have been involved in child sacrifice - some having done it themselves before their conversion to Christ, others having seen it performed -with a view to instigating a judicial enquiry.'

The strange thing is that there is no mention of any children being killed in Kevin Logan's book.

Ultimately all of these allegations failed in the course of time. The Cook Report was so badly researched it was apparently castigated by the government's Broadcasting Complaints Commission. Every one of the 20 cases Cook featured in the programme turned out to be untrue.

MAY 5th  1989 : The Daily Mirror reports that Kevin Logan had 'exorcised' a group of young children (some even below school age) behind closed doors in his Blackburn church but in front of cameras for The Cook Report. Logan said

"Some of these youngsters have been victims of child abuse and Satanism is at the root."

Such behaviour can itself be an abuse of children and shows the extent to which the media and some church workers are prepared to go in order to complete their self-fullfilling prophecies.

Yet when all these allegations were followed through by the police there was not one case which stood the test of time!  In fact Laura, the little girl in the photo whom Logan was exorcising of involvement with Satanism, contacted the SAFF decades later and, now an adult, told us that the SRA claims were utter clap-trap. Invented by her mentally ill mother to stop their father seeing them.  You can read her sad story in full here: https://saff.nfshost.com/childrenforthedevil.htm (scroll down to Laura's Story)

That's another child Logan should apologise to.

Despite Logan's continous and sensational claims none of the instances he quoted were real in the sense that the police could find no evidence of any of the claims having substance.

Ellel Grange in Lancaster is a Christian Foundation which not only helped Rev Kevin Logan but hosted special training seminars on the detection of Satanic Child Abuse for REACHOUT for SOCIAL WORKERS and the POLICE. But Ellel Grange is not part of the Anglican remit. It is Pentecostal in leaning and specifically adheres to the view that mental and physical illness is caused by demon infestation. The only way a person, even children, can be fully cured, they say, is to be exorcised on a repetitive basis. The implications are immense as the recent controversy over children being KILLED in Christian exorcism rites shows ( Click here for more background.)

Reachout is a Christian Charity which was originally inaugurated to help other Christians 'escape' from the Jehovah's Witnesses (which Reachout see as akin to a devil-worshiping cult), but they rapidly ditched that in favour of all-out Satanic Child Abuse campaigns run by their director Maureen Davies, a dental nurse from Rhyll.  Logan and Davies worked closely together for several years when promoting the Myth of Satanic Abuse he was often billed as another 'director' of Reachout, but when the government's definitive 1994 report was published and denounced it all as a figment of the minds of Christian fundamentalists and gullible social workers, Reachout quickly hived off Davies's Satanic Abuse work claiming that they had never been involved with it wholeheartedly (sparing with the verite!). She continued it independently under the Beacon Foundation. Reachout Trust was quiet for some time yet their website still has links to sources for the Satan Myth and when we last looked there's a Reachout Link on Logan's church website! The link is titled 'Cults / Occult / Sects' Do visitors know what they will be getting into if they click on it we wonder? For the full background on The Reachout Trust and the Beacon Foundation and its part in the Satanic Panic of 1990 check this out:  https://saff.nfshost.com/reachout.htm

SEPTEMBER 19th 1989: BBC WORLD SERVICE OUTLOOK programme 1.5 GMT Barbara Myers Interviews Kevin Logan as an 'expert on the occult' to 'explain why Satanism calls on children for obscene practices.'

LOGAN: I know it is a fact of life; I have to deal with the victims. A 10 year old I am dealing with 'at the moment' involved in satanic ritual abuse for 6.5 years the first six and a half years of his life. The boy is having to cope with enormous adjustments in his foster parent's home. Other children too on the West Coast of Lancashire, again are victims of ritual abuse and this is just a small number that we are having to deal with. And we need as a church, as a country, as various agencies throughout the country, to come to terms with it.

Well it sounds convincing, but in fact this was another set of imagined cases which Logan hyped but for which there was no factual evidence of anything of the sort happening and as time passed these cases too failed.

Interestingly when the Satan Bubble began to burst and journalists started to actually demand facts to back up their allegations, Maureen Davies admitted in an interview with a national newspaper that she had never ever dealt with any children, only adults.

VICAR WARNS OF OCCULT DANGERS IN HARRY POTTER

Now, 18 years later The Reverend Kevin Logan is at it again. SEPTEMBER 9: 2007: 'An Accrington Vicar is warning Harry Potter fans to beware of hidden occult messages buried with the last book of the series'

Logan is on his soapbox using time-worn and discredited fundamentalist ideas about 'hidden-messages'. Apparently, this idea first began in the fundamentalist circuit over so called 'backward masking' which was supposed to be hidden messages in the sound-tracks of rock music when records were played backwards! (the fact that turntables can't play records backwards was apparently irelevent!) It was a simple but devious gambit used by bigots to justify depriving their offspring of rock music they did not agree with.

The concept was further developed during the Satan Myth when fundamentalists convinced gullible social workers that the children they had uplifted in dawn strikes must have no contact whatsoever with their 'satanic' parents in case so-called 'trigger-words' or 'trigger-symbols' were given to them in presents and cards. The supposition was that they would somehow be struck dumb or refuse to 'reveal' the abuse they had supposedly suffered in satanic rites.

This bit of deceitful psychological double-think not only drove a wedge between parents and children but also provided a reason why kids who said that they had not been abused could be disbelieved and then 'tortured' with hours of questioning until they 'confessed'.

So it was that many children were not only deprived of contact with their completely innocent parents but any gifts or loved teddy-bears / blankets and toys they were sent and which would have comforted them were also confiscated. In many instances they were not even allowed to see the birthday cards their innocent parents sent in. Controlled emotional isolation of this kind is actually listed as torture in International Law if it was applied to adult combatants!  As the incarceration of these poor children often lasted for years the fundamentalist mind-set effectively fractured the trust between the children and their parents which is virtually impossible to heal.

To justify his latest Talibanesque campaign Kevin Logan states:

"(the Harry Potter books) are an encouragement to the vulnerable and under-aged to learn more of Paganism and the occult which for people ministering in this area, have a track record of emotional and spiritual damage' Accrington Observer Sept 9: 2007

Logan glibly defames the pagan belief which is thousands of years older and more widely established than Christianity in one general sweep of condemnation without a shred of evidence.  Bet he wouldn't try that on with Moslems or Jews! In his smug assumption that he is pandering to a converted audience Logan has forgotten that there is ample evidence of Christian crimes against humanity far outweighing anything that Pagans might ever have done.

We will not tax our readers with a long list of the MILLIONS of dissenters, who have been put to death by the Christian church throughout the centuries. Instead we simply draw their attention to the 50,000 Jews and Moslems who were murdered by the Church in the form of the Spanish Inquisition in the 16c simply because they refused to convert to Christianity. Not to mention the estimated other 125,000 (one hundred and twenty five thousand souls) who were flung into prisons, tortured and often castrated so they could not reproduce more Moslems, and then left to die from disease and abuse because they held to their right not to have the Christian religion forced upon them.

During this Reign of Terror, Jews and Moslems were persecuted not only with the sword but with an overload of the very same 'emotional and spiritual damage' that Logan arrogantly accuses paganism of!

• Those who refused to renounce their religion and convert to Christianity were beheaded, or burnt at the stake after being tortured.
• The massive Islamic libraries of the time (containing arabic translations of rare Classical Greek works) were all burned as being 'versions of the Koran' forever destroying powerful knowledge and wisdom of the ancients which could have helped civilisation evolve and prosper.
• Mosques and public baths were demolished throughout Spain as 'decadent'. Apparently cleanliness is not always next to godliness.
• Jews and Moslems were officially banned from public positions.
• They could not marry, assemble in groups of more than two, travel anywhere or, of course, carry arms.
• Their music and cultural festivities were totally banned. They were made non-people.
• In a foreshadow of the Nazi Holocaust, Christians made Moslems wear a blue crescent on their caps and turbans so they could pick on them whenever they wanted.
• As if all this wasn't enough they passed a law forbidding them to speak or teach Arabic and they also had to stop wearing their traditional dress and headgear.
• Their privacy was also denuded in many sneaky ways - for example they were made to leave their front doors wide open on Fridays so that Christians who passed could check they were not praying to Jehovah or Allah! Moslems complained that some Christians used this as an opportunity to walk in and steal things from them.

There were many other examples of 'physical, emotional and spiritual damage'. Enterprising Christian Clergy used to climb onto roofs in villages in the middle of winter to spy-out any house which did not have smoke emanating from its chimney - on the basis that orthodox Jews ( who would not build fires on the Sabbath); could be detected by this method and then lined up for persecution.

This is not an exhaustive review of the 'physical, emotional and spiritual damage' wreaked upon other faiths by Christians but there's PLENTY more if you want it.

And if you require a more up-to-date example you should check out The Black Museum of Priestly Abuse ; a horrific collection of hundreds of cases of physical and mental abuse perpetrated on children by priests and clergy in the West over the past decade or so.

It makes Logan's complaining look like what it really is - a deceitful method of blackening any non-Christian belief in order to gain power to disenfranchise it. After the debacle of the Satanic Ritual Abuse Myth and the immense harm that was done to children by do-gooders during that period it is clear that by starting the same cycle off again Logan certainly cannot have the safety of children most in mind.

Christianity's inhumanity to man and the many people who killed others in the name of Christ is all too prevalent in our history, all of which gives some idea of how foolish it is for this self-righteous troublemaker to point the finger of blame at Paganism. This list will stop here, because it is very disturbing and we do not mean to claim that ALL Christians support this kind of brutality - we are fully aware that the vast majority of Christians would be appalled by it - however you must be reminded of it in order to make sure that you get a sense of proportion and do not do not accept at face value the prejudiced falsehoods perpetrated by Kevin Logan in his Harry Potter Campaign. Unlike you,Kevin Logan doesn't appear to know of his own saviour's teachings:

He who is without Sin, Let Him Cast the First Stone.

Now what was that you said about Harry Potter Kevin?

UPDATE: 2024

Whilst the Reverend Kevin Logan of Blackburn appointed himself Witch-finder General  & spread fake-news that  Satanists were  sexually abusing & killing children during the 1990 Satanic Panic, he must have been far too busy to notice a priest working in his own Blackburn diocese who was investigated by the cops five times as a potential risk to children from 1990 to 2021.