The Satanic Temple has been making inroads on the campuses of American elementary schools with their After School Satan Club (ASSC) program, most recently at Jane Addams School in Moline, IL.
The Satanic Temple, which is really more of a secular humanist organization that employs religious imagery than an actual occult enclave, says that it will not offer students any kind of religious teachings. Instead, the ASSC will provide self-guided activities such as science and craft projects, puzzles, and games, while offering lessons in benevolence, empathy, critical thinking, and creativity.
Nevertheless, the Satanic Temple’s atheistic worldview and use of occult imagery is enough to raise serious alarm bells for many parents who have protested the presence of ASSC on the campus of Jane Addams School. Further cause of concern is the fact that the Satanic Temple has launched this campaign as a direct response to the presence of Christian Good News Clubs in the lineup of after school programmatic offerings.
“If you’re going to open the public forum up to one religion, you open it up to all of them,” Lucien Greaves, Co-Founder of the Satanic Temple, told KWQC. “There have been decades, generations of people trying to encroach religion into public schools and we simply can’t allow the government to pick and choose which religions are worthy of expression.
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Satanic Temple leadership has been explicit about the fact that the ASSC is a targeted campaign against other religious programs offered on elementary school campuses.
“It’s only in schools that have a current religious club being offered,” said Julie Everett, director of the ASSC. Everett nevertheless expressed that the ASSC is a secular program rather than a religious one, saying, “We’re not a religious indoctrination program, nor do we teach indoctrination or offer religious opinions.”
Greaves said that the goal of the ASSC is “to help enrich the educational outcomes of the kids in the school district.”
Child Evangelism, which operates Good News Clubs, casts a similar vision for its own program and has expressed that the Satanic Temple’s targeted campaign against them seems to betray nefarious intent.
“I cannot tell you what’s in their hearts, but they certainly are doing work that would be contrary to the Good News of Jesus Christ,” said Reece Kauffman, president of Child Evangelism, to Fox News. “We’re not trying to be against anyone. We’re simply trying to take the biblical Good News of the Gospel to the children.”
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