‘Satan Club’ meeting at Chesapeake elementary school causes a stir, but it’s not what you think
All hell broke loose after a flyer began circulating online inviting elementary school kids in Chesapeake to “have fun at after-school Satan Club.”
The announcement of the new club drew all the expected internet outrage. Pastors showed their congregants. Politicians weighed in. Parents debated free speech. People said this was the “last straw.”
So, we set out to get to the bottom of things.
The club is organized by The Satanic Temple, a nontheistic religious organization formed about a decade ago. We talked to June Everett, the club’s national campaign director, and Rose Bastet, the volunteer running the Chesapeake club at B.M. Williams Primary.
So, what kind of fun are we talking about?
“We aren’t sacrificing goats or praising the Dark Lord,” Everett said.
Then what will kids do?
According to the group: Arts and crafts. Puzzles. Science projects.
Wait. What about Satan?
He won’t be discussed. The Satanic Temple doesn’t believe in him. Not that way, anyway.
What if kids ask because of, you know, the name of the club?
They’ll be referred to their parents.
So who’s coming?
So far, four kids are signed up. None attend B.M. Williams Primary.
Then we turned to the school district. Officials say their hands are tied.
“Over the years, different religious groups have requested and been allowed to rent our facilities after hours,” reads a message from the superintendent sent Friday morning to parents and other community members. “By law, CPS cannot discriminate based on beliefs among groups wishing to rent our facilities.”
The district stresses, in bold letters, that it’s “not a School District-approved club.”
Outgoing board members Christie New Craig and Colleen Leary posted about the club on their personal Facebook pages, noting the requirement by law to allow the club to rent school facilities.
“Our world has gone crazy,” New Craig said. “Can’t make this stuff up.”
Leary wrote that she wished the district “had the legal standing to block it.”
Del. Tim Anderson, who is an attorney, also weighed in online, saying he personally didn’t like the club and found it “creepy.”
“You probably find a Satan Club objectionable,” Anderson wrote on his Facebook pages. “However, there are Bible clubs, Muslim clubs, Jewish clubs who use public school facilities all the time. Can we really object? I don’t think so. It’s the definition of the First Amendment.”
Everett, with the Satanic Temple, notes that the organization only takes its club to elementary schools where parents request their presence. Additionally, they only establish clubs at schools where other religious clubs are operating. In particular, the After School Satan Club was a response to the Good News Club, a religious club for kids run by the Child Evangelism Fellowship. The Fellowship says its purpose is to “evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
The Good News Club was started at B.M. Williams Primary this fall and, according to Everett, the school’s principal sent out a message and the club’s flier to parents to let them know about it. When Everett asked for the same kind of advertising for her club, district officials told her that the distribution of the Good News Club flyer “was not in accordance with our procedures and it will be addressed with school administration.”
District officials did not independently confirm these emails, but Everett sent a copy of the email chain to The Pilot.
Chesapeake’s club, which will hold its first meeting Dec. 15, is the fifth such club in the country. Two more are in the planning stages.
The Satanic Temple is guided by seven tenets, which encourage values like empathy, justice and adherence to science, as well as respecting the freedoms of others.
Including the “freedom to offend.”
Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com
