LEBANON, Connecticut (LifeSiteNews) – Yet another public school is allowing an “After School Satan Club” to take root, this time in Connecticut and for children as young as elementary school level.
The Satanic Temple (TST) is a secular-leftist group that purports to embrace Satan’s name as a “symbol of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority” while not believing that God, the devil, or other supernatural concepts literally exist. Its primary mission is to agitate for an array of leftist causes, including legal abortion and LGBT “pride,” with the Satanic branding helping draw attention to its antics via shock value.
Among its activities in recent years have been “After School Satan Clubs” in various school districts across the country. A handout for one such club distributed earlier this year at a Colorado school offers an example of how TST aims to present such clubs, advertising games, puzzles, snacks, community service projects, and more through which children supposedly “learn … benevolence & empathy, critical thinking, problem solving, creative expression, personal sovereignty,” and “compassion.”
Catholic News Agency reported that TST has announced the initiative’s first expansion into Connecticut next month at Lebanon Elementary School, where volunteers are supposedly “ready to create a fun and inviting place for students to learn and make new friends.” The group is teasing “science projects,” “community service projects,” “puzzles and games,” and “snacks” for the new club.
The announcement claimed that these Satan Clubs do “not attempt to convert children to any religious ideology,” though its reiteration of TST’s view of Satan as a “literary figure who represents a metaphorical construct of rejecting tyranny and championing the human mind and spirit” reinforces concerns that its activities will come with an undercurrent of antipathy for any religious identity.
Further, CT Insider quotes TST as billing Satan Clubs’ purpose as “provid[ing] a safe and inclusive alternative to the religious clubs that use threats of eternal damnation to convert school children to their belief system,” and volunteer club leader Melissa Gurr as saying its purpose “is not necessarily just to counter” the Christian Good News Club (emphasis added).
“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,” TST added. Most religious Americans would argue their faiths are not incompatible with questioning the unknown or rational analysis, two concepts that have loaded connotations in the eyes of secular leftists. “We prefer to give children an appreciation of the natural wonders surrounding them, not a fear of everlasting other-worldly horrors,” it said, again teasing an adversarial approach to religion.
After School Satan Club national director June Everett went so far as to frame the project as a protest against school religious clubs, saying “if the good news club packs up and leaves town then we pack up and leave town as well,” according to Fox 61.
Lebanon School Superintendent Andrew Gonzalez argued that the school has no choice but to allow the club, citing U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
“Not everyone will agree with, or attend meetings of, every group that is approved to use school facilities,” he 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.”
In May, a federal district court judge ruled that a Pennsylvania school district must allow Satan Clubs.
“I don’t agree with it at all and I couldn’t imagine my kids coming home and telling me this is going on at the school. I would probably take them out,” Lebanon resident Nicole Starr said of the Connecticut situation. “It’s just a way, I think, to brainwash the kids these days. I have family members who are going to homeschool because it’s getting really bad.”