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My dear Wormwood,

I cannot express how delighted I was to receive your letter and discover that your new patient is a Southern Baptist minister. You have an important task here. I do not exaggerate when I say that if you and the other members of your team succeed well enough, we may finally achieve the breakthrough we have been working for all these years. The groundwork is laid, we must just be resolute and follow through.

I fully understand that you are a little nervous, given the responsibilities the senior devils have placed on you. Don't be. You have the training, you know what to do. You say your minister is a fundamentally decent type. That may well be so; but your job, and don't forget it for a moment, is to exploit his fallible human understanding and make him turn his good qualities against himself. Play your cards right, and within a year he will be doing our bidding and bringing the whole of his congregation under our control. You have many cards, study them carefully.

Your patient often hears he is living in exceptional times. Keep reminding him of that. Encourage him to think that exceptional times require exceptional solutions, that the usual rules no longer apply. The Enemy will try to give him hope. Do what you can to counter that. Make him feel that the situation is almost hopeless, that only methods he would normally not even consider have a chance of saving him now. Use strong, physical phrases like "fight fire with fire" and "hit below the belt". Make him remember that he is a weak human body and forget that he is an immortal spirit. Make him feel that the people you have taught him to fear are not the Enemy's children at all, but mere vermin who must be exterminated in order to save his flock. You will be surprised how easy it is.

The Enemy has given your patient free will, but do what you can to make him forget that. Tell him he has no choice, there is only one person who can help him. His conscience is no doubt already aware that the person in question is the Antichrist, but encourage his "rational" thoughts, which will be of great assistance to you. Use phrases like "lesser of two evils" to describe monstrous wrongs, and "baby Christian" to describe utter immorality. With a little persuasion, you will find he accepts these arguments as plausible and even self-evident. Luckily for us, the modern Church has long ceased to place much store in logic. Work systematically, and you will soon make your patient trust this person far more than he does the Enemy's disgraceful son.

Dear Wormwood, cast your doubts aside. I know you will succeed. But before I conclude, I must warn you about one detail which did somewhat disquiet me. You mentioned that your patient had yesterday visited a bookstore and seen a recent tract by Russell Moore entitled Losing Our Religion. I do not wish to alarm you, but please keep your patient away from this book. The Reverend Moore seems entirely too well informed about our plans, and we are urgently reviewing our internal security procedures. Luckily, he is only one fallible human. Remind your patient that most of his coreligionists dislike Moore and consider him a dangerous heretic. It is to be regretted that these people are no longer burned at the stake; it was an expeditious solution I always rather liked. But the modern methods are only slightly less reliable. Just be sensible, and this problem will soon resolve itself.

With all my best wishes,

Your affectionate uncle

Screwtape