Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part D (2025)

Intertwined with religious narratives are the dark stories centered on confrontations with devil figures. This study suggests a framing of the sinister demonic presence within narrative as part of the responsiveness to cultural revolutions that defy traditional conventions in the American religious narrative. A key oration in Latter-Day Saint leadership is President Hugh B. Brown’s timely response to the 1967 Summer of Love movement. In the speech Brown describes his supernatural visitation by an evil spirit that sought to disturb and discourage him. To contextualize personal and communal meaning in the religious versus cultural revolution experience, this study situates the devil figure’s visit in Brown’s lived experience to resemblances in Goethe’s Faustian tradition of the devil’s arrival and enticements. Brown’s experience resembles the Faustian visit in three ways: the arrival of timely temptations, evil’s torture of the protagonist, and the protagonist’s suppression of evil and transcendent victory.