Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
As a way to counter the distribution of Christian materials in public schools in Orange County, Florida, The Satanic Temple has received permission to hand out an illustrated children’s activity book entitled The Satanic Children’s Big Book of Activities.
Artnet.com is reporting that the door was opened to the distribution of satanic materials after a successful lawsuit filed by the Central Florida Freethought Community (CFFC) in which a judge ruled that if the school district allowed Bibles and other Christian materials to be disseminated in schools, it had to allow atheist and other religious materials in as well.
As a result of this ruling, the CFFC’s David Williamson was permitted to distribute readings such as “Jesus is Dead” and “Why I am Not a Muslim” to school children.
This, in turn, allowed the Satanic Temple to get their own materials into schools, including an activities book that features word jumbles and other illustrations that present occult practices and symbols in a favorable light.
Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves claims his organization would never seek to do something like this, which violates the strong separation of Church and State that he favors, but is only doing so because of Christians pushed to get their materials into the schools.
In other words, it’s our fault that he’s forced to teach children to look favorably upon a being who is hell-bent (pun intended) on destroying them in both body and soul.
“If a public school board is going to allow religious pamphlets and full Bibles to be distributed to students—as is the case in Orange County, Florida—we think the responsible thing to do is to ensure that these students are given access to a variety of differing religious opinions, as opposed to standing idly by while one religious voice dominates the discourse and delivers propaganda to youth,” Greaves said.
This would seem like a very reasonable statement except for the fact that this nation is founded upon Christian principles. If we follow Greaves’ logic, this means we must now throw out the entire U.S. legal system for the sake of “inclusiveness.”
But I’m not surprised, This is the same organization that successfully sued to be allowed to erect a goat-headed Baphomet statue in front of the Oklahoma Statehouse to oppose the erection of a Ten Commandments display. This statue shows Satan seated on a throne with two adoring children at his feet.
Greaves insists that these satanic forays into mainstream American society really do go against his deep respect for secularism, but these opportunities “to establish an equal voice for contrasting religious opinions in the public square, tend to favor marginalized, lesser-known, and alternative religions” like his own. So why not take advantage?
Besides, he says, children in these Florida schools are already aware of the Christian religion and its Bible. By providing them with satanic activity books, “This might be the first exposure these children have to the actual practice of Satanism. We think many students will be very curious to see what we offer.”
And what do they have to offer? A loosely contrived “religion” in which they promise “to engage actively in political/cultural dialogues and re-assert religious pluralism” – all of which they could do without promoting Satan, I might add.
This is just another one of the evil one’s charades, of which Greaves and his ilk are nothing more than pawns – even though they claim to do everything but worship the evil entity which they try to obfuscate behind veils of “religiopolitics” and good old-fashioned secularism.
“People who fear a challenge to the Judeo-Christian religiopolitical monopoly are correct to fear us,” the Temple states on its website. “We assert that religion, at its best, is a narrative construct by which practitioners contextualize their lives. We believe that the religious narrative should be malleable to conform to the best scientific evidence. We reject supernaturalism and strive to approach all things with reasonable agnosticism.”
Once again, these purveyors of tolerance exhibit an even worse state of myopia than those they oppose as they continue by labeling anyone who believes what they don’t as “charlatans, mystic snake-oil salespeople, cults, pseudoscientists, witch-hunting conspiracists”.
They go on to threaten: “We will be merciless in our debunking and discrediting of their exploitative practices. We will assert the rights of religious non-believers everywhere, and those who hold pious and pompous positions of arbitrary authority based on superstition and/or pseudoscience are wise to view us as a distinct threat.”
All this from an organization that claims to “encourage benevolence and empathy among all people”!
But what do we expect? After all, Jesus did tell us that “Satan is a liar” and “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).
God forbid that the totalitarian demands of this “tolerance” should ever take full effect in this country because it would make us into a nation full of people who stand for nothing, a nation in a state of complete moral collapse.
Regardless of whether Greaves thinks he’s worshiping Satan or some convoluted idea of tolerance, a heartless beast is certainly behind the spreading of these lies to innocent children.
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