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Satanic worshippers try to open after-school clubs in nine USA districts
The After School Satan Club is as much about spreading the word of secularism as it is about protesting evangelism in schools.
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The sarcastically named Satanic Temple wants students to have a choice beyond evangelical clubs.
The religious organisation contacted nine public school districts across the U.S. this week asking to start Satanic after-school programs. “However, once religion invades schools, as The Good News Clubs have, The Satanic Temple will fight to ensure that plurality and true religious liberty are respected”.
This boils down to the “parental permission” part of school rules.
A Christian legal aid group that has represented the Child Evangelism Fellowship says Greaves’ group is an “atheist group masquerading” as religious.
Several districts contacted by The Associated Press said they were reviewing the group’s request and noted their facilities were available to community groups.
That’s how they found out about another Good News Club at Point Defiance Elementary School. Many student groups, religious and non-religious, meet in public schools, so students learn to tolerate fellow classmates who do not share their beliefs, he said. The CEF then went on a tear, and by 2011, it reported 3,560 Good News Clubs, putting them in more than 5 percent of public elementary schools.
“We would like to thank the Liberty Counsel specifically for opening the doors to the After School Satan Clubs through their dedication to religious liberty”, Greaves explained to the gathering of chapter heads in Salem. “They know the only way to make their point is to call the court’s bluff, saying what’s good for the Good News clubs is good for us”, said Charles Haynes, director of the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute in Washington.
A judge threw out a Satanic Temple’s lawsuit this week after the group challenged a Missouri law requiring a 72-hour waiting period before a woman has an abortion.
The Satanic Temple has argued that forcing its members to remain pregnant despite their desire for an immediate abortion and forcing its members to read non-scientifically vetted “educational material” violates the first amendment rights of those belonging to the Satanic Temple. “I suspect, in this particular case, I can’t imagine there’s going to be a lot of students participating in this”.
The Satanic Temple has taken up similar causes outside schools, including seeking to install an 8½-foot-tall bronze statue of Satan at the Oklahoma Capitol to stand in contrast to a Ten Commandments monument. “Thinking exercises that help children understand how we know what we know about our world”.
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Dozens of organizations supported the Good News clubs with “amicus” or friend-of-the-court briefs including a group of 20 theologians and religion scholars of various denominations and law and philosophy professors from the University of Notre Dame. According to the Good News Club’s website, “each club includes a clear presentation of the Gospel and an opportunity for children to trust the Lord Jesus as Savior”. The Good News Clubs teach morals, character development, patriotism and respect from a Christian viewpoint.