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.
Me and my wife are both members of TST and we LOVE the work they do. The Tenets they promote are loving, self-respecting, and do justice towards an ideal world of Individualism, anti-authoritarianism, and critical thinking - i.e. everything that Christianity and modern conservatism in general are eager to suppress. We regularly donate to them, and we constantly purchase stuff through their store to help support them.
The uproar is the point.
The Satanic Temple makes it clear its members do not actually worship the devil or believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural.
But somehow conservative Christians believe that there are huge swaths of people who agree that their religion is 100% correct but worship the weak bad guy character.
(Which is not to mention that there are actually multiple bad guys who got combined, Satan and Lucifer and The Snake were originally different people)
The number of adults in the US that think Satan is a literal being is way too fucking high.
It started as an editor using 'adversary' in the place of what was probably the goddess Anat appealing the head of the pantheon to kill the son of the protagonist like in the earlier Canaanite A Tale of Aqhat as an intro into what was an adaptation of the also earlier Babylonian Theodicy in Job.
But we couldn't have a polytheistic holdover, so suddenly there was a supernatural 'adversary' ('Satan') in a story.
Which in turn spawned fanfiction during the prophet ages where they referred to the supernatural adversary of Job.
Then Hellenistic ideas around Hades (both the place and figure) get added into the mix, and we get the Enochian literature about fallen angels, where the guided katabasis influenced Virgil which later informs Dante's Inferno.
Then King James messes up translating Isaiah and the Latin for the morning star (Lucifer) gets mistaken for a proper name, further tying the supernatural adversary to being one of the Enochian fallen angels. And we get Milton's Paradise Lost.
It's all just mistranslations and fanfiction.
And yet millions of people believe it's actually a thing so much so that they freak out at the idea of any references to it as literally being dangerous.
In 2022.
An age filled with things beyond the wildest imagination of those in antiquity dreaming up miracles and wonders.
We're so beyond fucked as a species.
ASS Club.
Nice.
Of course Tennessee Christians are outraged. The after School Satan Club is most likely way more Christian than they are so there's stiff competition.
good, the more noise they make the more this will spread
The kids are alright 😃
Actively missing the point......... "In a meeting with more than 40 pastors and other religious leaders, the district board chair, Althea E Greene, said: “Satan has no room in this district.”"
Low IQ Christians never learn. They must be old dogs.
God bless the Satanic Temple!
People always fall for the obvious troll.
Satanism is to Christianity as Jim's beach day team "Voldemort" is to Dwight's team "Gryffindor"
What do you call someone who believes in satan?
Christian.
Yes, yes, there are other Abrahamic religions... The point is that the only group who actually believe in Satan and therefore are the ones who afford Satan a place in their society are the ones complaining.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
Everyone gets to be part of whatever religion they want, Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Nice to read. I'm agreably surprized and relieved the kids are displaying this level of creativity. And all for a cause that does good in ways that are not at all obvious at first sight for so many people who see themeselves in grey zones. My only fear is that going such a point of controversy will provoque violent reactictions where other ways of fighting may not have, and thereby not causing to swap contless more enemies they (or we) didn't need to have. But then again, can anything happen without it being the case?
In the 60s my best friend started the Organization for Atheists or OFA in response to the young christian group in our high school. They even had a chant" OFA OFA OFA goodness sakes!!!
Obviously a red herring. The Devil went down to Georgia, looking for a soul to steal.
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If the founders didn't just want to stir the pot, they would call the club "free-will humanitarian anti-authority club".
After a bit of prodding ChatGPT suggests: "Free Spirits for Global Empowerment and Liberty" (FSGEL), which is a million time better then invoking satan, just to get on people's nervs.
