More than 60 members of the Chesapeake, Va., community weighed in on a proposed “Satan Club” during a school board meeting Monday, while board members delayed voting on its approval, according to reports.
WAVY-TV reported that an application sent to BM Williams Elementary School last month was canceled last week after the club’s sponsor resigned.
Lucien Greaves, is a spokesman for The Satanic Temple, a group of political activists who identify as a religious sect, seeking to establish after-school Satan clubs as a counterpart to the fundamentalist Good News Christian Clubs, which they see as the Religious Right to infiltrate public education and erode the separation of church and state.
(Photo by Josh Reynolds for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Paperwork has been filed again for a new sponsor, although it is unclear if the club is expected to start on December 15 as originally intended.
PARENTS FIND OUT IN CONTROVERSY OVER SATAN’S CLUB AFTER SCHOOL SPEAKS: ‘AT HIS WITS’
June Everett, an ordained minister at The Satanic Temple, is the campaign manager for the After School Satan Club, or ASSC.
The club is meant to encourage creativity and promote empathy, according to Everett, and tries to establish a constructive and positive alternative to other religious after-school clubs.
Everett told Fox News Digital that she was first brought to the Satanic Temple five years ago after her first-grader son “was traumatized by his classmates on the playground one day, and they were Good News Club attendees.” that was taking place in the public”. elementary school she was attending at the time.”
The Baphomet statue is seen in the conversion room of the Satanic Temple in Salem, Massachusetts on October 8, 2019.
(Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
After picking up her crying son from school one day, she said other students told her that if she didn’t accept Jesus Christ into her heart and start going to church, she was going to burn in hell.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL MAKES ‘SATAN’S AFTER-SCHOOL CLUB’, RAGES PARENTS: ‘ABOMINATION AGAINST GOD’
This led Everett to look for alternatives to what was offered to students.
School board members did not vote Monday on whether to allow the club, WAVY reported, but they wanted to know about safety and concerns surrounding it.
A flyer on the Satanic Temple’s Facebook page stated: “The Satanic Temple is a non-theistic religion that views Satan as a literary figure representing a metaphorical construct of rejecting tyranny and defending the human mind and spirit. After School Satan Club does not attempt to convert children to any religious ideology. Instead, The Satanic Temple supports children to think for themselves.”
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Despite concerns from parents in the district that the club need not be in the elementary school where children are so young, lawyers said the school should make room for the club because of its affiliation with religion, linking it to the First Amendment. And the expression freedom.
Still, all students must have a signed parental permission slip to attend any after-school program hosted by an outside organization.
