Search

Satanic Temple pushes back against Christian after-school ‘indoctrination’

The Satanic Temple is fighting back against Christian indoctrination of youth by opening up its own after-school programs. 

By World Israel News Staff

As part of an attempt to push back against the Christian Good News Clubs offered to American youth, an after-school ‘Satan Club” was recently opened by the Satanic Temple in Moline, Illinois, Fox News reported.

Students attending the Satan Club are offered an opportunity to participate in science projects, crafts, puzzles and games. This is all in addition to learning about social skills such as empathy, critical thinking, and benevolence.

“I’m hoping that with our presence, people can see that good people can have different perspectives, sometimes on the same mythology, but not mean any harm,” Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves told Fox News.

Greaves said that the Good News Club has become the Satanists’ biggest nemesis and that “the after-school Satan Clubs were conceived in order to give an alternative to [the] religious indoctrination [of] after-school programs.”

The Satanic Temple said that it is barely a religious organization at all; rather, it’s an atheist organization that uses the devil to depict “defiance, independence, wisdom and self-empowerment.”

A spokesperson for Jane Addams Elementary School in Moline, Illinois, said it was not endorsing any Satanic activity but could not fight back against the temple due to a 2001 Supreme Court ruling that religious groups could operate after-school programs.

Good News Christian Clubs are now in about 5,000 schools nationwide. Leader Reece Kauffman of Child Evangelism told Fox that they’re “Simply trying to take the biblical Good News of the Gospel to the children” by way of the after-school clubs.

In December, the Temple of Satan received some backlash after installing the satanic deity Baphomet, depicted as a swaddled baby, next to the Christian nativity scene, according to the local State Journal-Register.

“This year’s tradition marks a greater urgency in the Baphomet’s message of harmony and reconciliation,” noted the Satanic Temple’s director of Campaign Operations, Erin Helian.

Last winter marked the third year that the temple has installed an exhibit, despite controversy.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki, who oversaw the installation of the nativity scene in the Capitol rotunda, said satanic displays “should have no place in this Capitol or any other place.”