The Devilish Club at a School Near You

Search for an after-school Christian club for your child and you will have to look far and wide. If you are interested in an after-school Satan club, however, never fear — this fall they’re popping up everywhere.

The goal of these ghoulish gatherings is not to teach kids to worship Satan, but to keep them from learning about God. Using the purposefully inflammatory name “Satan Club,” their endgame seems to be one thing: Shut down all faith clubs.

“They’re going out of their way to mock God.”

Under the law, if a Satan club can’t exist — neither can any faith clubs.

“Ten years ago, if you had asked me if we could get to this point, I never would have imagined it,” said Archbishop Council Nedd II, rector of St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Pine Grove Mills, Pennsylvania; he’s also a founding member of Project 21, a black leadership network. “It’s frightening and shocking — and the new normal — that people of faith are openly mocked.”

The Satanic Temple plans to roll out these clubs over the next several months, with several already up and running.

The website Afterschoolsatan.com (which is festooned with child-devil images, including a little cartoon devil holding crayons) says it has “generated a massive wave of interest.”

[lz_bulleted_list title=”The After-School Satan Club” source=”http://returntoorder.org”]Denies existence of God, eternity, sin, and the spiritual realm|Promotes science and reason as the sole sources of truth|Tries to replace Christian charity with humanitarian kindness|Says children should have no fear of any punishment for sin or reward for virtue[/lz_bulleted_list]

“Across the nation, parents are concerned about encroachments by proselytizing evangelicals in their public schools, and are eager to establish the presence of a contrasting voice that helps children understand that one doesn’t need to submit to superstition in order to be a good person,” the group continued. “Our goal, ultimately, is to place an ASSC [after-school Satan club] in every school where the Good News Clubs, or other proselytizing religious groups, have established a presence.”

One Oregon mom of two elementary-age children — an atheist — told LifeZette, “I would allow my child to attend such a club – it’s more about scientific inquiry and acknowledging the absence of any provable deity. The name is off-putting, but what it actually is about — non-spirituality — is not, at least to me.”

But Archbishop Nedd II said he would ask such a person, “Is this how you were raised? Probably not. Your parents laid a foundation for you. If you have no moral compass, no standard based on traditional Judeo-Christian values — don’t be surprised when your kids act up.”

Related: A Satan Club at Your Kid’s School?

Satanic Temple chapter heads from New York, Boston, Utah, and Arizona met in Salem, Massachusetts, recently with parties from other states to plan their expansion, The Washington Post and others reported.

The Satanic Temple doesn’t actually worship Satan — it just “borrows” the name for shock value. It “rejects all forms of supernaturalism and is committed to the view that scientific rationality provides the best measure of reality,” according to The Post article.

What the hell — excuse the pun — is going on here?

In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that an Albany, New York, elementary school could not exclude the evangelical Good News Club from meeting after school when it allowed the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and 4-H to meet. The Satanic Temple, which is opposed to religious expression of any kind, then started the After-School Satan Clubs to compete with them and wipe them out (they hoped) — using their purposefully distasteful name as a strategy.

The Satanic Temple doesn’t actually worship Satan — it just borrows his name for shock value.

“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,” said the Satanic Temple.

Under the law, this mockery of a youth club has the same right to meet as does any other private club.

“It’s one thing to set up a group to espouse an opposing point of view to the one religious groups choose to express in a forum,” Jordan Lorence, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom (and a litigator in the Good News Supreme Court case) wrote on The Federalist. “But by positioning themselves as faux Satanists instead of as the ‘After-School Atheist Club,’ for example, they recklessly risk closing the forum to every group, even ones that have nothing to do with religion … Their opposition to evangelical Christianity should not result in denying equal access.”

This could also mean trouble for any LGBT clubs that meet after school.

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“If Satanic Temple leaders say gay-straight alliances can continue to meet in public schools because they are not religious, but the Good News Clubs and student Bible studies must go because they are religious, then they are urging the government to discriminate against private student groups because of the content of their speech,” wrote Lorence.

“It seems that with their name and their secularist agenda, they’re going out of their way to mock God,” said Archbishop Nedd II. “You have these atheists pretending to be Satanists, mocking everything that a lot of people around the world hold dear.”

Sandra Boykin of Greenville, South Carolina, has started a petition on Change.org to end the after-school Satan clubs.

“This is important because we MUST take a STAND and be the VOICE of our CHILDREN and GRANDCHILDREN,” she commented on her petition, using the all-caps for dramatic effect. “If you do NOTHING, then you’ve given Satan rule over your child’s life. If the Bible can’t be preached in the Public School System, then neither can Satan!! SPEAK OUT!!!!”

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Said the archbishop, “There’s never been a civilization that didn’t attribute their existence to a higher power. All through history, there has been something bigger than humans providing them with guidance — as well some sort of moral structure. Taboos were placed on the culture for a reason. If all that is gone — what will be left?”