When Satan Club went to school: What’s behind the group that created controversy in Chesapeake

The Satanic Temple was ready to pick a fight — lots of fights, actually, and it got them — in Illinois, in Pennsylvania and in Chesapeake.

Hampton Roads was introduced to the club in the fall, when the Chesapeake school division received an application from the group to use B.M. Williams Primary to host its meetings.

The backlash arrived almost immediately. Droves of people spoke out against the club at School Board meetings, bomb threats were made against the school and club organizers and the division quickly went to work to make it more difficult for outside groups to use school facilities.

Eventually, after the ACLU of Virginia took on the issue, the club held its first meeting in February and has continued to gather monthly since.

The Satanic Temple, formed about a decade ago, refers to itself as a “nontheistic religious organization.” The group is guided by seven tenets, which encourage values such as empathy, justice and adherence to science, as well as respecting the freedoms of others. Members don’t believe in Satan as a real being, but rather as a literary symbol of standing up to tyrannical authority.

The group originally launched a few After-School Satan Clubs about seven years ago, but they didn’t gain traction. A couple of years ago, after the pandemic began to subside, the temple picked up the project again with a new structure and a campaign director to lead it.

The group’s relaunch of the club has fared better the second time around, and a handful have opened across the country this year — with locations in Colorado, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio in addition to Chesapeake. The club launches have elicited community outrage and court action. But they are also starting a conversation around what religion is and what freedom of religion truly looks like.

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‘We have every right’

June Everett, campaign director of the After-School Satan Club, said it the club originally began as a direct 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.”

Everett said the Good News Club was her gateway to The Satanic Temple. About five years ago, Everett — who at the time identified as an atheist — picked up her visibly upset first-grade son from school. He told her his friends said he would be taken away from his family and would burn in hell if he didn’t accept Jesus and start going to church.

It turns out, Everett said, the students who said this to her son attended the Good News Club. She says the group encourages attendees to “spread the word” and evangelize to their friends.

“They’re using these kids as tools, essentially,” Everett said.

As Everett began researching how to address the issue with her son’s school, she came across The Satanic Temple and their After-School Satan Club. She was drawn to the Temple and decided to become a satanist, and after some persuasion, agreed to take on the position of campaign director for the clubs.

The club was re-imagined, loosening its curriculum and instead encouraging attendees to design projects and activities around the seven tenets. Kids now participate in everything from art and science activities to community service projects.

As the group picks up momentum, Everett said she continues to update requirements for the club, such as having a parent or volunteer willing to actively participate once a club launches.

Everett said The Satanic Temple would prefer no religion in government spaces.

“But if there are religious groups occupying that space, we do believe that we have every right to be there and also to represent the satanists in our community,” she said.

Schools have continued to resist the clubs, changing their policies and erecting roadblocks to try to prevent them from meeting. Earlier this month, a federal judge ordered a Pennsylvania school district to allow the club to meet on its property.

Everett insists that first and foremost, the clubs are about offering an alternative to minority students in the community — including those from atheist, satanist, pagan, agnostic and other families. The fact that the club launches attract media attention and the conversation becomes political and exposes people to the “hypocrisy in some of our laws” is simply a “side effect.”

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Political theater, or free exercise of religion?

Not everyone believes that The Satanic Temple is not just out trolling. Many question the longevity of the group and whether it is a true religion. Some believe that after media attention dies down, the After-School Satan Club will cease to exist.

Stephen Mannix, vice chair of the local chapter of the Child Evangelism Fellowship, spoke during a Chesapeake School Board meeting in February, encouraging the board not to expel all non-school clubs.

“Is it wise to change school-use policies to stop a club with the shelf life of cheese?” he asked.

Mannix said the club is simply a “PR stunt meant to inflame emotions and the media.”

John Godfrey, a pastor at Great Hope Baptist Church, also spoke against the club at a board meeting.

“The sad reality is, this is political theater, and we all know it,” he said.

Joseph Laycock, a professor of religious studies at Texas State University, has delved into The Satanic Temple’s origins. Laycock, who wrote a book about the group in 2020, said some of the group’s earlier stunts may have been pranks.

In 2013, a group of Satanists led by the co-founder of The Satanic Temple, said a “Satanist prayer” in Florida and thanked then-Gov. Rick Scott for allowing student-initiated prayers before school. Some of those participating turned out to be actors, said Laycock, who interviewed one during his research. The actor told Laycock he did not identify as a Satanist, but said it was simply a job.

“So this was kind of more on the order of a prank,” Laycock said, though The Satanic Temple called it “a controlled observation experiment.”

The group also tried to place a statue of Satan at the Oklahoma State Capitol, after a state representative donated a Ten Commandments monument that was installed on Capitol grounds.

Laycock believes over time, The Satanic Temple became more serious, creating the Seven Tenets and laying out its beliefs. Chapters began to form across the country and across the world, and the group began doing charity work and holding rituals that were not media stunts.

“Things like unbaptism rituals to kind of overcome what they experienced as religious trauma from their upbringing,” he said.

Laycock also notes that the group’s headquarters was set on fire last summer in Salem, Massachusetts.

“To me, that’s significant, because I think most people would not perpetuate a prank if their life and property were at stake,” he said. “They feel this is worth taking on quite a lot of personal risk to do so. It’s clearly important to them. It’s more than just a joke.”

Laycock, who teaches a class on new religious movements, said people sometimes compare The Satanic Temple to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a group that advocated that believing in a deity made of spaghetti was as legitimate as believing in God.

While both groups use a similar argument, Laycock believes there is a key difference.

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“The difference is they don’t believe that the universe is created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster, right? They just don’t believe it. Whereas TST really does believe in the Seven Tenets,” he said.

He notes that some people have defected from The Satanic Temple, saying its leaders are no longer following the tenets.

But there is no doubt that activism is a part of the group’s mission. The After-School Satan Club falls under the Temple’s advocacy branch, which also includes campaigns for things such as reproductive rights.

“By doing these kinds of provocations, I think they are really changing the public conversation,” Laycock said, both about what counts as a religion and about the true meaning of religious freedom.

“Because of their actions, people who normally talk about the importance of religious freedom, some of them have said, ‘Actually, I don’t like religious freedom, if religious freedom means satanists can do this kind of stuff.’”

“This small group has kind of been able to punch above its weight in forcing these kinds of questions on people.”

Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com