Satanic Temple objects to governor’s push for more religion in schools and says members could act as student chaplains

Satanic Temple objects to governor’s push for more religion in schools and says members could act as student chaplains

Dark messengers of satanism could soon be walking the hallways of Florida’s public schools, and it’s a consequence of hard-right governor Ron DeSantis’s push for more religion in education.

Members of the Satanic Temple say they are poised to act as volunteer chaplains under a state law that took effect this week opening campuses to “additional counseling and support to students” from outside organizations.

Although HB 931 leaves the implementation of chaplain programs to individual school districts, and only requires schools to list a volunteer’s religion “if any”, DeSantis has made clear its intent is to restore the tenets of Christianity to public education.

Without the bill, DeSantis said at its signing in April: “You’re basically saying that God has no place [on campus]. That’s wrong.”

The satanists see the law, which comes amid a vigorous theocratic drive into education by the religious right nationally, as an equal opportunity: if Christian chaplains are permitted access to students, often at the most vulnerable and impressionable stages of their lives, then so are they.

  • Flying Squid
    20•5 months ago

    Considering Satan is a fiction, I’d say Satan can be whatever you want him to be. It doesn’t help that the Bible doesn’t actually explain what happened to cast Satan into Hell other than there being a war in Heaven. Pretty much all we get is Revelation 12:7-10.

    7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

    Also, there’s Isaiah 45:7

    I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

    So if God creates evil, what does Satan even do? Carry out his work for him? That seems to be what Twain thought when he wrote Letters from Earth. Seems as good a source as any.

    • rhabarbaEnglish
      12•5 months ago

      Considering Satan is a fiction, I’d say Satan can be whatever you want him to be.

      This is probably also true for the Christian God. But let’s assume for the sake of discussion that the Bible is a factual account: the Book of Numbers already refers to the worship of the Semitic god Ba’al in the “ancient” people of Israel. Etymologically speaking, Ba’al is identical to what later became “Beelzebub”, one of the names of Satan; it is reported that the statues of Asherah (the wife of YHWH) and Ba’al were destroyed. Ultimately, according to the Bible, the followers of YHWH waged a “holy war” against the followers of the other gods and declared these gods to be the “Antichrist” by a mere act of speech.

      It is not known whether the followers of Ba’al were really less merciful than those who later waged crusades.

      • @[email protected]
        11•5 months ago

        The problem with treating the Bible as a factual account is nothing adds up in it. Saying Beelzebub is a “name of Satan” is really misleading and a result of later negotiation with the text. Just like the serpent in the garden of Eden wasn’t Satan until folks decided it was - there is no support for that in the text at all.

        Satan is more like calling someone enemy - you can have lots of enemies without them all being the same entity.

        • TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)English
          9•5 months ago

          Also I’m not sure how the “god” (Satan) that wanted humans to have freewill is the bad guy, when “God” for some reason was purposefully trying to keep humans as puppets (or play things) in his little garden. And then had to punish the humans as soon as they could do what they wanted instead of the story laid out for them.

          Reminds me a lot of President Business from the Lego movie. He wants everything to be perfect but people keep doing whatever they want to and screwing it up, so he wants to use the “kragle” to “fix” the plan and make everything perfect again.

          • @[email protected]
            1•5 months ago

            Ignorance and subservience is a key point of Christianity, and if you can stomach interacting with them long enough more will say it out loud than you’d think, especially anti vaxxers and other super right dinguses -

            it boils down into “something something gods will,” science and knowledge are sinful, our poking around in the ways of the universe are the cause of all the ills in the world, and we should return to a time when all our information is disseminated exclusively by religious leaders.

            Thats why, while there are of course more fantastical/“biblical” bands, a lot of black metal is actually more humanist and pro knowledge, pro living, pro freedom. Darkness, the left hand path, etc are just metaphors for rejecting blind faith and obedience.