A few years ago a small town in Florida declared itself a Satan-free zone, and the idea has stuck in my mind ever since. It’s a fascinating notion: dealing with the evils of the world by legislative fiat. Out here in California, it’s quite a standard thing for city councils and other minor municipal bodies to issue resonant decrees calling for an end to this or that troublesome contemporary activity—whether it be planetary warming, gum-chewing in school, noisy car stereos played in quiet neighborhoods, or the sale of irradiated lettuce in grocery stores, some community around here has gone on record staunchly decrying it. But decrying is one thing and an outright ban by law is something else again. I think we ought to give more thought to the practice.

The town in Florida is about seventy-five miles north of Tampa, a placid sort of place on the banks of the beautiful Withlacoochee River where some sixteen hundred pleasant and mostly law-abiding people enjoy the mild Gulf Coast climate and a general freedom from the spiritual angst that afflicts harried city-dwellers. But even in this amiable little burg the dark hand of Lucifer was making itself known. Though the Prince of Darkness had not yet manifested himself visibly, signs of his presence were becoming apparent: an uptick in crime, some arrests for child abuse and spousal abuse, and an ugly tendency on the part of the younger citizens to dress in black clothing and paint their faces a ghastly white, not just for Halloween but as a regular fashion. There were tales of increasing drug usage, too, and casual blasphemy in everyday speech. Concerned citizens felt that the town was turning into a pit of iniquity.
A local pastor was the first to take action. “We as Christians have got to take a stand for God,” he said, “and reclaim our town for God.” And so he had hollowed-out wooden posts installed at each of the town’s four entrances, with the intention of inserting a prayer into them that would serve to keep the Dark One at bay. But the mayor felt that some more emphatic statement needed to be made, and on the very evening—Halloween—when malevolent spirits are thought to be most active, she drew up an official proclamation to be placed in each of the preacher’s gateposts:

Be it known that from this day forward that Satan, ruler of darkness, giver of evil, destroyer of what is good and just, is not now, nor ever again will be, a part of this town . . . Satan is hereby declared powerless, no longer ruling over, nor influencing, our citizens.
In the past, Satan has caused division, animosity, hate, confusion, ungodly acts on our youth, and discord among our friends and loved ones. No longer!
The body of Jesus Christ, those citizens cleansed by the Blood of the Lamb, hereby join together to bind the forces of evil in the Holy Name of Jesus. We have taken our town back for the Kingdom of God. We are taking everything back that the devil ever stole from us. We will never again be deceived by satanic and demonic forces.

As blood-bought children of God we exercise our authority over the devil in Jesus’s name. By that authority, and through His Blessed Name, we command all Satanic and demonic forces to cease their activities and depart. . . .
Strong stuff, especially the parts about the body of Jesus and the Blood of the Lamb (and the references to the Gospels that I omit here), but very nicely phrased, I think, except for one wobbly preposition, the bit about Satan’s causing “ungodly acts on our youth.” And the measure, duly signed by the town clerk and stamped with the official seal, was widely applauded in town. “I think the law-abiding citizens have banded together and drawn some strength from what the mayor has done,” a police lieutenant said. But would it have much effect on demonic activities in town? The first results were not encouraging: not long after the proclamations were placed within the posts, some minion of darkness stole all four of them. New posts were constructed and installed. The youth of the town continued, however, to dress in vile Gothic garb. No measurable decrease in crime could be detected. And waggish miscreants began calling the mayor’s office. “Carolyn?” they would say. “This is Satan. I know you want me, baby.”

Some political issues also cropped up. Doubtless few people in that rural area would openly stand forth and serve as advocates for Old Nick, but some, at least, were a bit troubled by the use of Jesus’s name in a municipal proclamation. “One person’s beliefs are fine, but not on the town letterhead,” a citizen commented. Another noted that in a part of the proclamation not quoted here the mayor declared she had not only been elected by the citizens but “appointed by God to this position of leadership.” To some, that appeared an overstatement, at the very minimum. A professor of political science at the University of Miami remarked that although the measure “would seem like something everyone would agree on, it also seems aggressive and threatening to others who don’t specifically abide by that belief.” Another academic, an expert on constitutional law, thought the proclamation “would open up the town to accusations of a preference of religions.” The American Civil Liberties Union also began to wonder whether issues of separation of church and state might be involved, and threatened legal action.
The story spread across our land, and, since not all Americans believe that mayors are appointed by God or that the Holy Name of Jesus should be an instrument of municipal regulation, the little Floridian town became the butt of some unpleasant jokes. Hastily the town commission ruled that the mayor had acted alone and that the proclamation had no official standing, and the good people of that amiable little town were once again left to fend for themselves against the Devil’s wiles.

I happen not to be a blood-bought child of God myself—I come from a different tribe—and so I don’t think my own community (a pleasant little burg on the edge of San Francisco Bay, where, Lord knows, the Devil is at work 24/7, minimum) would benefit from such a proclamation. Nor am I very impressed by the neighboring city of Berkeley’s decision to proclaim itself a nuclear-free zone, since, last time I was there, Berkeley was full of electrons and protons and a lot of other bad atomic stuff. But some of these proclamations do work. As a non-smoker, I approve of the stern anti-smoking laws that keep the air pure in the restaurants I frequent, even those in Paris and London. I like the idea that driving through red lights is illegal in most municipalities in my area. And how can I not cheer Alexander Kuzmin, the mayor of Megion in western Siberia, who forbade the making of excuses by civil employees? The good mayor has released a list of twenty-seven forbidden phrases, among them, “Somebody else has the documents,” “I think I was off sick at the time,” and “We’re having lunch.” I don’t know what the punishment for violating the rules would be—exile to Siberia wouldn’t be of much use, after all—but I hope it’s merciless.

If I had my druthers, I might be tempted to issue a proclamation of my own, declaring my house a tax-free zone. But that might lead the city fathers to reciprocate by making my street a police-free zone, too, and the federal goverment might want to make it a postal-delivery-free zone, and I see other drawbacks, too. So I go on paying taxes like everyone else, though taking little joy in the process. I doubt that declaring my city or, for that matter, my entire state to be a stupidity-free zone would work out very well either.

There are limits, after all, to what can be achieved by official decree, as the mayor of that little town in Florida might have begun to suspect when Lucifer’s lieutenants made off with the posts containing her proclamation. I give you the example of King Canute of England (and Denmark), one of the most sensible rulers in history, whose best-known deed, as often is the case with the deeds of sensible rulers, has been so distorted and muddled in the retelling that he is made to seem like a silly old fool instead of the wise monarch he really was.

Canute, who ruled over England from 1015 to 1035, was a fierce, rough Viking, but he was also a pious man who had turned away from the old religion of Odin and Thor to abide by the teachings of Jesus, and—so says the twelfth-century chronicler Henry of Huntingdon—he became peeved by courtiers who were flattering him by ascribing godlike powers to him. So, Henry says, Canute had his throne set up by the edge of the sea (either in West Sussex or Southampton, or perhaps it was not the sea but the Thames, right in the middle of London; accounts differ) and commanded the oncoming tide to halt.

Of course the tide didn’t halt, and the king was forced to jump back from the shore to keep his royal feet and robes from getting soaked. Modern tellers of the tale want us to believe that this shows that Canute was just an arrogant dope, his head swollen with monarchical pride. But in fact Canute was smarter than that, and what he was demonstrating was humility, not hubris. For as he leaped back from the unheeding waves he said, according to the chronicler, “Let all men know by this how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.” Then he hung his golden crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again.

Today’s kings, queens, prime ministers, and presidents, by and large, are just as aware as King Canute was that they don’t have the power to roll back the tides, and a good thing that is, too, for we can just imagine what malicious fun Queen Elizabeth II and President Sarkozy would have rolling the English Channel back and forth from shore to shore if only they could. (On the other hand, California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger would, I like to think, be able to protect us here against a tsunami of the sort that hit Asian coasts a few years ago.) But indeed such wonders can’t be achieved. And I suspect that even if the Florida experiment had been allowed to run a little longer, it would have turned out equally difficult to run Satan out of town by mayoral proclamation.