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Satan in Our Public Schools
According to this report in the Washington Post, the Satanic Temple is launching a drive to start after-school Satan clubs in elementary schools across the nation. It seems obvious from their point of view:
They’re here plotting to bring their wisdom to the nation’s public elementary school children. They point out that Christian evangelical groups already have infiltrated the lives of America’s children through after-school religious programming in public schools, and they appear determined to give young students a choice: Jesus or Satan.
The Supreme Court opened the doors of schools to religious clubs in 2001 in its Good News Club v. Milford Central School decision. The majority held that banning a religious club from meeting after hours on school grounds was impermissible viewpoint discrimination in violation of the 1st Amendment’s free speech clause. Taking the goose/gander approach, the Satanic Temple has set out to balance the views of what the article characterizes as “a fundamentalist form of evangelical Christianity.”
According to the article:
The Satanic Temple makes no secret of its desire to use that same approach. “We would like to thank the Liberty Counsel specifically for opening the doors to the After School Satan Clubs through their dedication to religious liberty,” Greaves explained to the gathering of chapter heads in Salem. “So, ‘the Satanic Temple leverages religious freedom laws that put after-school clubs in elementary schools nationwide.’ That’s going to be the message.”
However, I wonder if this is using a tool in a manner counter to its purpose and design. These Satanists do not present themselves as a religion and seem to only desire to counter religion in the public square.
But the group’s plan for public schoolchildren isn’t actually about promoting worship of the devil. The Satanic Temple doesn’t espouse a belief in the existence of a supernatural being that other religions identify solemnly as Satan, or Lucifer, or Beelzebub. The Temple rejects all forms of supernaturalism and is committed to the view that scientific rationality provides the best measure of reality.
According to Mesner, who goes by the professional name of Lucien Greaves, “Satan” is just a “metaphorical construct” intended to represent the rejection of all forms of tyranny over the human mind.
…
The blend of political activism, religious critique and performance art that characterizes the After School Satan Club proposal is not a new approach for the Satanic Temple. It is just the most recent in a series of efforts that have made the Temple famous and notorious.
In the end, the purpose becomes clear. The Satanic Temple is not a separate religion competing for public space in which to proclaim its beliefs. Were it that I would climb atop the soap box with them and lend my support for their cause even though I disagree absolutely with the substance of their beliefs. Rather, it is an anti-religious organization seeking not the promotion of free speech but the silencing of speech with which its members disagree. They do not wish to win the battle of ideas through fair play but seek merely to force a forfeit by destroying the field.
Published in General
Can a religion be against all religions? Who is to say that it can’t? I’ve told this story here before, there was a florida city that allowed various religions to sign up to give a opening prayer before council meetings, all went well til a satanist group signed up, the practice was discontinued shortly thereafter…
A story like that was mentioned in the article. They don’t want to be allowed to pray just like everyone else; rather, they want no one else to pray just like they don’t.
I think it is more of a we don’t want government picking and choosing which prayers are acceptable and which are not.
That’s not what I get from it. They seem happier with the abolition of public prayer than with being included in it.
Not sure I’m saying something different, they don’t want government approved public prayer.
One more reason to end public schools and go to all private schooling. Let parents decide.
I think if the government has to legislate on this kind of thing, they have to do a sophisticated job of defining religion. This idea that an organization can call itself a religion because it wants to do so is unacceptable. It seems to me, also, that a school should have something to say about the name of an organization that uses its facilities. I doubt they’d allow a group to use the word F–k in its name. So if the Satanists aren’t Satanists, find a name that is not considered abhorrent to the population.
All faiths are not equal, and cannot be equal in the eyes of the law.
Which law delineates certain faiths as being unequal under the law? Do you feel comfortable letting politicians decide which faiths should be favored over others?
Sounds like atheists are perverting true satanism.
I’m not too worried. So they start a Satan club. What if nobody shows up? Or, what if a bunch of self-imagined rebels and radicals show up? They’ll get bored after a couple meetings.
Satanists don’t have anything to say themselves, and they can’t silence religions, so they just want to drown out what religions say with cacophanous noise. But these are not people who can sustain such pointlessness for very long.
The proper approach, one that is in keeping with our First Amendment. Let peoples beliefs sink or swim on their own accord…
I say, let them do it.
No parents in their right minds would let a child attend. Those who do? Nuts.
You have to expose the nuts to oppose the nuts.
We can’t know that, KC. What if misfits get involved? These are kids, easily influenced and the ones who will be attracted are those that have no moral or religious grounding. If the organization is not religious (and it sounds like it’s not), they can form a group with a different name and teach their stuff; if they teach what they say, you’re right; the kids will get bored.
Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer. Clinton dedicated her book to Alinsky.
Aren’t clubs normally started by students, who then have to go and find a faculty sponsor to help run it? I think the reason we don’t already have satan clubs is not because of the law or school policy, but because no one really wants one.
Judgment call, I guess. Once you label a club “The Satanists Club,” I think everyone already knows what’s going on. It’s basically the Anti-Religion Club who get their material by taking whatever religious folks are talking about and turning it inside out. That gets boring, I think, and kids are more repelled by boredom than anything else.
Religion tends to be about authority (e.g., Christianity claims authority to continue the teaching that Jesus taught), and any time you mix [young people] with [authority], you’re going to get problems anyway. Oedipus, you know. And in turn, by attacking the Satanist Club, you may be fueling the anti-authoritarian impulse, rather than extinguishing it. Sometimes these things are like knots; pull too hard, and you only make the problem worse.
He’s already running the public schools. Why bother with a club?
In this case, rather than appealing to the law to regulate which groups may be allowed, I would think the school would just continue a blanket requirement of parent permission slips for students to attend anything.
I agree that if the organization were allowed to come in and not able to cause its intended stir, it would quietly go away.
Any faith which has values contrary to the values in the Declaration of Independence, where any use of a gender specific pronoun, is not construed to mean just one gender. Such faiths should be excluded at will.
Satanism is just a reaction against the main group. Satanists don’t have a real religion at all.
I have to admit, I rather like the Ringo/Weber Satanist they dreamed up for the March Upcountry series, but it has Satan as the good guy, and God a prisoner of the angels.
An atheist gets his giggles tormenting a very religious old woman. She’s not the most learned Bible scholar in the world, but she’s fervent and not prone to too many heresies -which makes her a good target for the atheist. One day, the atheist hears her praying through an open window. Seems she’s got financial troubles and she needs help getting groceries this week.
Smirking, the atheist goes to the store, buys a week’s worth of groceries, leaves them in the old woman’s driveway -rings the doorbell and then hides in the bushes.
The woman comes out, sees the groceries and immediately gives a prayer of thanks to God.
The atheist leaps out of the bushes and exclaims, “It wasn’t your god who bought those groceries! It was me! What do you say to that?”
The woman laughs and says, “I always knew God would provide. I didn’t know he’d have the devil pick up the tab.”
Militant atheists are angry at God for not being the God they want.
Bold for emphasis, but the whole thing is meaningful.
Any faith which does not support the bold text is not fit to be a religion in America. Thus, if the faith supports that some people are worth less than others because of who their parents were, it is not a fit faith. If a religion believes that both sexes do not have equal rights under the law, that is not a fit faith. If a religion believes that slavery of other faiths or races is OK, it is not a fit faith.
BTW: Happiness in those days meant living your life as you see fit, not the feeling.
Let them makes fools of themselves, and good luck to them finding a teacher to sponsor the club. It’s a fake club with an axe to grind, like Westboro Baptist with less sincerity and class. It will have the half-life that diseased hamster in your 5th grade class, and should offer no real threat.
Of course this means that the school administrators will respond in the most harmful way possible for parents, students, and constitutional liberty.
Is there any evidence that the framers took this view? That some faiths are fit, and that some are unfit? Or are you just making the extrapolation yourself?
Is this really how we want to open up religious liberty argument? I know you are talking about Islam, but your test is a two-edged sword that will punish conservative Christian churches.
Oh? Your denomination doesn’t allow female pastors? Not a real religion. Gay people can’t be married in your church? Goodbye tax exempt status.
Christianity thrived in America because of religious tolerance. (Thank God for William Penn and the Quakers). Now is not the time to blink because of an exterior threat.
EDIT: For missing word.
Yes. They would have had no trouble outlawing Satan Worship.
Funny thing, we allow people to practice Hinduism in America, but that whole Caste System that is as vital to it? We don’t let them have that. Islam denies there is a secular state. We don’t allow theocracy either. I imagine they would not have allowed Aztecs to start up their human killing either. Heck, they disallowed more than one wife.