Uproar as after-school Satan club forms at Tennessee elementary school
Uproar as after-school Satan club forms at Tennessee elementary school
Satanic clubs, whose members do not worship the devil, usually formed in response to presence of religious groups in schools
Community members in a Tennessee school district want to banish Satan from their children’s halls after the formation of a new club was announced.
The After School Satan Club (ASSC) wants to establish a branch in Chimneyrock elementary school in the Memphis-Shelby county schools (MSCS) district.
The ASSC is a federally recognized nonprofit organization and national after-school program with local chapters across the US. The club is associated with the Satanic Temple, though it claims it is secular and “promotes self-directed education by supporting the intellectual and creative interests of students”.
The Satanic Temple makes it clear its members do not actually worship the devil or believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural. Instead Satan is used as a symbol of free will, humanism and anti-authoritarianism.
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I’m cool with banning satan shit if we ban all other religious shit in politics and law. Fuck your imaginary friends.
The Satanic Temple is an atheistic organization that uses Satan metaphorically, mostly to troll Christians.
DO YOU WORSHIP SATAN?
No, nor do we believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural. The Satanic Temple believes that religion can, and should, be divorced from superstition. As such, we do not promote a belief in a personal Satan. To embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions. Satanists should actively work to hone critical thinking and exercise reasonable agnosticism in all things. Our beliefs must be malleable to the best current scientific understandings of the material world — never the reverse.
https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/faq
As you can see from this uproar, it works quite well too.
Yeah, I know. Good.
That is the exact goal of The Satanic Temple. They would be incredibly happy to have their own symbols removed, as it would mean all religious symbols would be removed from government institutions. They are trying to scare Christians into voting against their own legislation, basically.
The first amendment in the constitution makes it so the government has to give equal rights to all religions, so the Christians can't remove the Satanic symbols without also voting to remove their own.
The Satanic Temple isn't religious.
I know, but they’re using religious pretense in the service of freeing us all from religious oppression.
Thats a complicated thing to say because the ST functions as a real religion in the US which is the basis for why they're able to challenge things in court. If they didn't qualify as a sincere religion their mission wouldn't work, and that "sincerely held" qualification is actually challenged in some cases. Recently this qualification became an even bigger deal when people claimed they had religious beliefs against vaccination. In the past its been applied to people challenging the draft on behalf of sincerely held religious beliefs.
I don't think they're a religion like Christianity though, maybe a pseudoreligion or civil religion.