Gotta love the Satanists. They're fighting the good fight.
this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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And best of all, they’re not even satanists. They just call themselves an edgy name
Christians don't understand that. Apparently the satanic panic never ended.
Satanic panic is their whole life. I really pity them. They live in constant fear of not only their god who supposedly "loves" them, but another deity who also doesn't exist.
I live with such a person and you are correct. It really is their whole life. Said person put their hands on me and tried to shout the demons out of me because I disagreed with them.
Funnily enough, no demons were forthcoming.
Yep! "What do you call someome who believes in a literal Satan?" .. "Christian."
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I'm not for any religious discrimination.
They should all be worshipped privately and have no governmental supporting.
They should all be worshipped privately
Pretty sure the bible specifically mentions that too.
Hey, don't you go bringing the Bible into this discussion about religion!
Yeah, Republicans hate when you do that because they're completely unarmed!
These people are not actual religious worshippers though. This is activism. There’s a difference between the two groups
Edit: here’s some additional information, should you be interested - https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/faq
That's why the ~~Church of Satan~~ Satanic Temple is trying this, they know it will cause outrage and people will be far more likely to ban all religion from schools than allow satanism.
the Temple [...] named a telehealth abortion clinic after Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s mom.
This is a beautifully poetic insult and I love it.
That’s my religious organization! Proud to be a regular donor. Highly recommend everyone joins and donates, they’re truly doing great work
I'm Christian, but have given them money.
Separating church and state makes better government AND better churches.
Good on you. It's always refreshing to hear from Christian folks who have a strong enough moral compass to steer away from (let alone actively support direct opponents of) some of the more zealous or bigoted views which unfortunately seem to be growing stronger in the Christian community as of late.
I say this from the outside looking in, as I've never been associated with any church myself, so this viewpoint of mine may just be the result of an increasingly active vocal minority.
But I'm very curious to hear your experience as someone within the community; have you yourself seen growth in these types of zealous or bigoted views in the past several years within the Christian Community? Things like stronger, more vocal, or even unwavering support of anti-abortion or anti-LGBTQ laws/practices?
I'm a United Methodist and former clergy, and the last 5 years have been whiplash.
We've spent 50 years trying to make the denomination more inclusive and accepting towards homosexuals, but for some organizational reasons (primarily a heavy-African vote in the worldwide governing body of the church) it's been difficult, and the more "traditional" wing of the church has been dragging us backwards.
We have our global conference (basically the legislative session of the church) every 4 years. In 2012 it got very heated. In 2016 the debate got downright nasty to the point where they had to calm a special session just to debate homosexuality in 2019 simply so the church could move on with the rest of the conference.
2019 was really, really bad. The traditionalists got their way on every issue.
The biggest blow was changing how church trials worked. As it was, "practicing" homosexuals were barred from the clergy, and officiating over a gay marriage was a de-frockable offense under church law. But that wasn't that bad in reality, because Methodist Clergy are very educated and overwhelmingly disagreed with the rules, so when it came to a church trial the jury (made up of other clergy) refused to punish. In 2019, they changed the rule to remove clergy's option to not punish.
The only ray of hope was the recommendation of a path to allow individual churches to leave the church but keep their land. It was basically the admission that the church was going to go through a schism. It looked for all the world that those who wanted to be more inclusive would have to start a new denomination.
But then the weirdest thing happened.
The ultra-conservatives were still mad even though they'd won. They were so mad, in fact, that they wanted to get rid of those who had opposed them. But there was no way to kick out churches who weren't controlled by Fox News. So they huffed and puffed and got so angry they decided to start their own super-bigoted Republican church anyway. They called it the Global Methodist Church since they figured the rest of the world would follow them and they left the denomination starting in 2021 when the path for disaffiliation opened up. In all, they got about a quarter of the US churches - mostly small rural churches that depended heavily on funding from the larger organization they were leaving...
A few weeks ago the 2024 conference was held. Due to Vivid it was the first real conference we'd had since 2016.
Gay marriage, gay clergy, and accepting homosexuality as being a-OK all passed with over 90% support. Everyone who had voted against it before had either left the denomination or been so repulsed by the fringe actors who had that they changed their position.
It's been a ride.
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For a moment I thought you were going to say "doing God's work"
I was going to say doing Satan’s work, but we’re actually nontheists
Please consider donating to the Satanic Temple if you can. They're doing important work fighting Christian Nationalism.
For those out there who only read headlines, the short of it is that many Satanists are rarely actually worshipers of Satan like a deity, many of them are just proactive atheists who have adopted the most abhorrent religious identity possible to Christians to provide necessary pushback against attempts at making the USA a Christian nation.
The same people who scream relentlessly about supporting the constitution for issues like gun control, seem just fine with abandoning the 1st amendment's Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clauses. So Satanists are forcing Christians to declare their choices out loud. If you're going to say the law should allow religion to be part of government, then you have to be fine with all religions being involved, OR you have to admit that you don't respect the USA's founding principles and documents. You can't have it both ways.
There is not so much Satanism being promoted here as much as a spotlight on hypocrisy and I'm all in for it.
Are my donations to TST tax deductable?
The only thing better than The Church of Satan is having them essentially state-funded :)
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We don't worship Satan because mythological supernatural creatures simply don't exist.
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Satanist don't actually want in, they want religion out
Correction, they want equal religious rights for everyone
correction: They only want in when other religions also want it.
Basically, they're the US military if the US military was like "hey wouldn't it be funny if we trolled them instead of bombing three hospitals?"
I'm a Satanist and affiliated with neither CoS or TST. The leadership of TST are not good people. One of them tried to make himself the god of a cargo cult and the other has a history of making racist, antisemitic and ablist statements. He also owned a website about eugenics until 2018.
That video I linked to is long but it is very well sourced and I hope might give you a bit more insight into who you're supporting if you choose to join or donate to them. There's a lot of comments under the video from ex-TST members, including Ministers and Chapter Heads who've been badly burnt by TST.
Sorry to ask, but could someone summarize the video? Cannot watch it rn, and will probably forget later.
That said, all organizations face this kind of “what’s the orgs vision or character” challenge. Thats why good leadership is important. Sometimes it’s best to cut loses and reorganize, and also market how you’re different now.
Supporting eugenics in any form is unconscionable, but people make mistakes and can grow from them. There are examples of KKK members who became activists in other direction, and we shouldn’t lock people in to their past bad decisions. I encourage the idea of “reformed racists”.
As asinine as I think the idea of “Satan” is in general, I see value in contenders and challengers to established religious authorities. As a rule, we should remove religion from policy making.
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As someone who recently completed work on an 8 and a half tall demon statue in his living room, I approve.
8 and a half tall demon statue
My high school math and science teachers eyes are twitching....
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Bet cuckservatives would rather allow satanism into their schools if.. it was suggested that Islam too should be included.
Prosperity Gospel is so close to LaVeyan Satanism that it barely makes a difference.
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Good. Hail Satan and teach kids about all religions or none.
FUCK YEAH!!! PRAISE SATAN!!!!
Fair is fair right? Or let me guess, not like that?
"'Freedom' of religion!"
"No wait, not like that!!!"
And Pastafarians?
As a Satanist, I absolutely think schools should welcome your bountiful deity with open arms, so long as they feel it's important to discuss religion in school. Preferably, we should leave that kind of personal discussion at home. That being said, I think people could really benefit from learning about "The seven I would really rather you didn'ts."
Ra'men.
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Don't really need the Satanists. Just tell conservatives that anything they want to mandate that is Christian can also/ will be done for Muslims. Notice how the war on Chirstmas always heats up around the time Ramadan coincides with it?
We absolutely need the satanists they are the ones that are doing things. What are the other religions doing?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When conservative lawmakers in Florida and Texas won the fight to allow religious chaplains in public schools, they swung open the door to ministers from other faiths — including the Satanic Temple.
It offered the Hellions Academy as an alternative to Christian studies during school hours and named a telehealth abortion clinic after Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s mom.
The proposals, which vary slightly, would have chaplains of various denominations serve in similar capacities as school counselors, in some cases with on-campus offices or salaries paid for by the districts.
A federal court sided with the Temple in a legal challenge last year, and there are currently seven clubs nationwide, where children make arts and crafts, learn about animals and do science experiments.
One of the Temple’s first actions was to perform a “pink mass” in which gay couples made out over the grave of the mother of Fred Phelps, founder of the homophobic Westboro Baptist Church, and declared her a lesbian.
The Temple has protested corporal punishment of children and sued states to argue that abortion restrictions violate their religious rights.“It is a poignant way of pushing the idea of what these governments really care about,” said Jay Wexler, a Boston University law professor who studies church-and-state issues.
The original article contains 1,381 words, the summary contains 209 words. Saved 85%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
One of the Temple’s first actions was to perform a “pink mass” in which gay couples made out over the grave of the mother of Fred Phelps, founder of the homophobic Westboro Baptist Church, and declared her a lesbian.
This is delicious.
That Baphomet statue is totally awesome!
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