Offering an alternative
After School Satan Club signing up students at a state elementary school to counter the Good News Club
LEBANON — Christian and satanist organizations that sponsor afterschool clubs throughout the nation — the latter often swooping in to counter the Christians’ message — have m adeas mall town in eastern Connecticut the latest center of their epic struggle.
The Salem, Massachusetts-based Satanic Temple
recently announced a new After School Satan Club at Lebanon Elementary School, the same school where the Warrenton, Missouri-based Child Evangelism Fellowship has been running a Good News Club.
The After School Satan Club (“Educatin’ with Satan” is the motto) is to hold its first session at the school on Dec. 1. Nine students have signed up, with their parents’ permission, and five adults, including two leaders of the regional Satanic Temple, have volunteered as activity leaders, club campaign director and Satanic Temple minister June Everett said Monday.
This is the first of the organization’s afterschool clubs in Connecticut, Everett said, and joins eight clubs in several other states. The Child Evangelism Fellowship sponsors about 2,500 Good News Clubs.
“The After School Satan Club does not believe in introducing religion into public schools and will only open a club if other religious groups are operating on campus,” according to the Satanic Temple. “ASSC exists to provide a safe and inclusive alternative to the religious clubs that use threats of eternal damnation to convert school children to their belief system.”
“These atheists have been after us for many years,” Child Evangelism Fellowship Vice President Moises Esteves said Monday. “This is their latest attempt. I don’t foresee them quitting because in their bones, they hate God and they hate the fact that we’re in public schools (teaching the Gospel).”
The satanists, however, say they offer an alternative to Christian proselytizing in taxpayer-funded schools. A student at Lebanon Elementary School had asked to join the Good News Club, Everett said, but the child’s mother said she did not feel comfortable with the Christian club, so she reached out to the Satanic Temple about launching a local club.
Melissa Gurr, a leader of the Satanic Temple congregation in Connecticut and Rhode Island and one of the volunteer club leaders in Lebanon, said the goal of the club “is not necessarily just to counter the Good News Club . ... Our purpose is to offer an alternative to the Good News Club or other religious clubs that may or may not be proseltyzing.”
Gurr said she has received a couple of hate messages since the club was announced, but she said there’s “nothing nefarious” about planned activities, She noted that the club posted a wish list onA mazon that includes science kits and crafts.
Satanic Temple members say they are not the red demons of popular imagination.
“After School Satan Clubs will focus on free inquiry and rationalism, the scientific basis for which we know what we know about the world around us,” according to the organization. “We prefer to give children an appreciation of the natural wonders surrounding them, not a fear of everlasting other-worldly horrors.”
Due to local policy that follows a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Lebanon schools must allow after-school clubs without regard to the religious, political, or philosophical ideas they express, School Superintendent Andrew Gonzalez wrote in a prepared statement.
“Not everyone will agree with, or attend meetings of, every group that is approved to use school facilities,” Gonzalez wrote. “However, prohibiting particular organizations from accessing our school buildings based on the perspectives they offer or express could violate our obligations under the First Amendment and other applicable law and would not align with our commitment to non-discrimination, equal protection and respect for diverse viewpoints.”
The new after-school club has been the topic of heated discussion on Lebanon social media forums. Some called the new club “disgusting” and “evil,” while others wrote that parents should be free to enroll their kids in activities that align with their beliefs or non-beliefs. The Satanic Temple has been alerting Lebanon parents through flyers and Facebook posts that try to assure them of the group’s educational intentions.
All after-school Satan Clubs, according to the organization, are based on activities centered around the Seven Fundamental Tenets and emphasize a scientific, rationalist, non-superstitious world view. Tenets include: “The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one’s own.”
The satanists like to draw a reaction, Esteves said, but their ultimate goal is to get pushed out of a school system so that school leaders then have to ban all after-school clubs. Everett denied that was the goal. Esteves also said Satanic Temple leaders push for a rejection of authority, which not only includes the ultimate authority, God, but also their parents.
With all the pressures and problems children are facing today, he said, including increased mental health ailments, drugs and sexual predators, what parent is going to say, “This is exactly what my kid needs — the After School Satan Club?”
As for proselytizing, Esteves said the Good News Club leaders know that the decision to embrace Christianity is between God and an individual.
“We teach the good news of the gospel,” he said, “that Jesus is the savior of the world and his message of love and forgiveness.”
And the Satanic Temple’s goal of getting kicked out of schools so they can drag CEF’s Good News Clubs with them has backfired, according to the organization, as more schools have requested Good News Clubs since the beginning of advertisements for the After School Satan Clubs, according to CEF.
Providence Schools allowed Good News Clubs this year afer CEF sued the district in March, contending that hostility toward the group’s religious message spurred district denial of students’ access to the “free, positive and character-building” clubs, The Providence Journal reported.
The U.S. Department of Education this year posted guidelines for school districts in accommodating such clubs. The guidance says students may organize prayer groups and religious clubs “to the same extent that students are permitted to organize other noncurricular student activity groups.”
“School officials should neither encourage nor discourage participation in student-run activities based upon the activities’ religious character or perspective,” the guidelines say. “Schools may take reasonable steps to ensure that students are not pressured to participate (or not to participate) in such religious activities.”
The After School Satan Club (“Educatin’ with Satan” is the motto) is to hold its first session at the school on Dec. 1. Nine students have signed up, with their parents’ permission.