Will Satanists Lead Your Child’s After-School Club?
Phillip Stucky
Warning: Sensitive Material
The Satanic Temple of Utah plans to
unveil a new after school program Monday designed for the nation’s
elementary-age children, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
The group plans to petition schools
so its curriculum can be part of official clubs as early as this fall. The
Satanists are targeting Utah, New York, Massachusetts, Arizona, Minnesota,
Louisiana and Florida to include the curriculum.
“It’s critical that children
understand that there are multiple perspectives on all issues, and that they
have a choice in how they think,” the Temple’s co-founder Doug Mesner told the
Tribune.
The Devil Now Offers ‘Healthy
Snacks’
Mesner told reporters the group
doesn’t actually promote devil worship, instead it eschews any sort of belief
in a supernatural being, supporting “scientific rationality” instead. The
planned curriculum includes “healthful snacks,” “creative learning activities,”
“a science lesson” and “an art project.”
“We think it’s important for kids to
be able to see multiple points of view, to reason things through, to have
empathy and feelings of benevolence for their fellow human beings,” Utah
chapter director Chalice Blythe told the Tribune.
Despite the group’s claims that it has
no religious intentions, the graphics on its after school website are filled
with horns and other signs traditionally associated with Satan. The group
appears to me mostly anti-Christian, as most of the pages center around
down-talking evangelical programs.
The frequently asked questions
portion of the site ends with the question, “Is this not a Christian Nation?”
After School Satan’s answer is simply, “No, It is not.”
The group argues that since
evangelical organizations have clubs and programs designed for elementary-aged
children, they should be allowed to teach kids, too. Group leaders are
targeting a limited number of schools that already have such clubs organized by
evangelical leaders called the “Good News Club.”
The Good News Clubs are sponsored by
the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), and were largely excluded from public
schools because of their supposed violation of seperation of church and state.
Mesner asserted, “While the Good
News Clubs focus on indoctrination, instilling children with a fear of hell and
God’s wrath, After School Satan Clubs will focus on free inquiry and
rationalism, We prefer to give children an appreciation of the natural wonders
surrounding them, not a fear of an everlasting other-worldly horror.”
After a Supreme Court ruling in 2001
that such clubs could not be excluded from public schools on the basis of free
speech, CEF’s reach grew to 3,560 clubs across the nation.
The Christian advocacy group Liberty Counsel
said the Satanic Temple was well within its rights to pursue such a program.
“I would definitely oppose
after-school Satanic clubs, but they have a First Amendment right to meet,”
founder Mat Staver said, according to the Tribune.
“I suspect, in this particular case,
I can’t imagine there’s going to be a lot of students participating in this.
It’s probably dust they’re kicking up and is likely to fade away in the near
future for lack of interest.”
Donald Trump talked about the “war
on Christianity” after he officially won the party’s nomination earlier in
July. Trump asserted that liberals were “chipping away at Christianity.”
“We’re not going to let that happen
anymore folks,” Trump told supporters. “We’re going to start saying Christmas
again, Trump added. “The department stores don’t put it up. we’re going to
start saying it again. They’re chipping away at Christianity. We can’t do it.”