United States
See no evil at After-School Satan Club
The flier went out in the run-up to Christmas, announcing a new club that would meet on one afternoon each month at a primary school in Virginia.
‘‘Hey kids!’’ it said. ‘‘Let’s have fun at After School Satan Club.’’ On one side of the flier, above a photograph of some colouring pencils, was an image of a smiling Beelzebub, dressed smartly in a blazer and a bow tie with a scholar’s cap nestled between his horns.
June Everett, a minister at The Satanic Temple, said her organisation had established four other After School Satan Clubs elsewhere and had been contacted by ‘‘some very eager parents’’ who wanted to have one at BM Williams Primary School in Chesapeake.
A nice lady named Rose had offered to run the club along with two other volunteers, she said.
As the flier said, children would not take part in occult rituals or animal sacrifices. The club championed science and reason, it said. ‘‘The Satanic Temple is a nontheistic religion that views Satan as a literary figure who represents a metaphorical construct of rejecting tyranny and championing the human mind and spirit.’’
Nevertheless, at a meeting of the Chesapeake School Board this week, one father said the club should not be allowed to meet. ‘‘If it means we got to go to court and fight, then we go to court,’’ he said.
In an interview in 2013, Doug Mesner, a co-founder of The Satanic Temple, explained that it was founded in response to religious groups who had been ‘‘successful in imposing themselves upon public affairs’’.
It applied for permission for an after-school club at BM Williams Primary School after a Christian group did the same. In a statement the Child Evangelism Fellowship accused The Satanic Temple of setting ‘‘a trap’’, provoking school boards to withdraw approval for all religious groups to hold clubs at the school.