Satanic Temple seeks to start after-school programs

[Anthea]

Satanic Temple seeks to start after-school programs in nine US districts

After-school religious clubs appear to be the next venture of a national group that sought to install a statue of Satan outside two state capitols to protest Christian monuments on public grounds.

A decision to erect a Christian monument outside the statehouse could backfire as satanists demand religious parity

The Satanic Temple contacted nine public school districts across the country this week seeking to start after-school Satan programs. In all but one district, religious clubs are operated by the Child Evangelism Fellowship Good News Clubs, in which students can study the Bible and pray, according to temple co-founder Lucien Greaves.

Several districts said they were reviewing the group’s request and noted their facilities were available to community groups. Mat Staver, founder of a Christian legal aid group that has represented the Child Evangelism Fellowship, said Greaves’ organization was illegitimate and an “atheist group masquerading” as religious.

Greaves described Satanism as an atheist philosophy whose believers “feel it provides everything a religion provides to be legitimized as such”.

The Satanic Temple, which is based in Salem, Massachusetts, and has chapters in several states, said it wants to counter well-funded fundamentalist Christian organizations that it believes are eroding the separation of church and state in public schools. Greaves said the after-school program would show “that people can be of different religious opinions and still be moral, upright people”.

“We think that when kids are being exposed to the idea that they will burn in hell and other supernatural ideas, that there is a positive upshot to being exposed to the presence of a satanic afterschool program,” he said.

Greaves said his group could pose tough legal fights if its requests are denied.

In Utah, the Granite school district said that if the group meets set requirements, including paying rent, there will be nothing the district can do to stop it. District spokesman Ben Horsley said the group would not be able to put up fliers in schools or talk to students during school hours, the same arrangement given to the Good News Club.

Springfield public schools in Missouri also said it was reviewing the group’s request. It noted that granting requests to use the district’s taxpayer-funded facilities “does not constitute the district’s endorsement”. The school district in Prince George’s County, Maryland, described a similar policy and noted parental permission was required for after-school activities.

The other districts are in Georgia, California, Florida, Oregon, Washington state and Arizona.

The Satanic Temple has taken up similar causes outside schools, including seeking to install an eight-and-a-half-foot bronze statue of Satan at the Oklahoma Capitol, to stand in contrast to a Ten Commandments monument. Oklahoma’s supreme court later banned all religious displays on capitol grounds.

The group is seeking to do the same outside Arkansas’ statehouse, where a Ten Commandments monument has been proposed.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... n-programs

[Benny]

Reading this, I came to think of the story about the "Pastafarians", a couple of years back. They demanded equal attention and teaching time for their beliefs in schools:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... nster.html

/B

[Piling]

Lol, such a relief sometimes to be citizen of a hard-line anti religion State

[Anthea]

I am a Pastafarian witch and I worship the Great God Cadbury

We have only one belief:

Do what you will save that it hurt none

I have absoluty NO problems with anyone worshipping the Devil because ALL Abrahamic religions are EVIL and Devil Worship is far better than several other religions, at least it does not pretend to be good

This planet is millions or even billions of years old

Would a god who created such a beautiful planet go away for all those years only to return a couple of thousand of years ago and create the Abrahamic religions that are being used to control people and destroy this lovely planet any everything on it

Abrahamic religions are EVIL

World leaders talk a lot about 'Human Rights' yet these barbaric religions are nothing more than cults that brainwash innocent children without any thought to their human rights