I’d like to see the Satanic Temple doing some sort of counter to the YMCA. That’d be real interesting.
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My cross country coach wanted us to meet for a prayer breakfast, but I refused to participate. He called my mother and asked her if she could talk to me because without my participation the school would not allow it. He figured that my parents, who were very active in the Episcopal Church and the town’s interdenominational council, would be concerned.
Well, he was wrong. My mom refused to get involved and my coach could not believe it. Why wouldn’t she encourage me to reconsider? My mom told him that public school and religious activities should not mix, and that she and my dad apparently more influence over me than they previously believed. 
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The idea of a satanic after-school club is obviously fun and heartwarming, but when I think about the practical reality, eh, I dunno.
I get that it’s really just a general-purpose secular club, but putting Satan in the title means it’ll always be about Christianity. The farthest you can get from Christianity isn’t Satanism — it’s not thinking about Christianity at all. You can’t attend Satan club 30 weeks in a row and claim you don’t care about religion.
It might be more credible if it were about embracing dissent generally, and taught kids about the Black Panthers, communism, queer culture, the evils of US imperialism, and all the other stuff schools suppress.
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It seems the school board is on the horns of a dilemma.
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My sister got physically assaulted for writing and circulating a petition to bar a series of pro-life rallies from the school auditorium. They were formal church activities propagated by a local Evangelical church that held bible studies during school lunch.
I was threatened with expulsion for asking school administrators why they hadn’t involved police.
In the late 90’s, in the NYC metro area.
So shit’s definitely changed for the better.
That would be their mistake. Our openly Gay Episcopalian Priest and his 3 retired Nun friends threatened to beat up the Evangelical youth minister behind the whole thing.
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Oh, sure, it will be all fun and games until the LeVeyan Satanists show up and start dominating everybody with their power plays.
People aren’t thinking laterally enough. You have to allow all religious groups or none? Boom: Spanish Inquisition.
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I think the TST exists to challenge embedded religion in state institutions and where have Christians mostly infiltrated? In the American South. There’s a chapter in Atlanta:
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The Episcopal Church is supposed to be the descendant of the Anglican (or Church of England) in the US. If it’s anything like the Anglican Church, they’re not at all that religious. The Evangelicals are little nuts in their fervour. We have a few churches like them in Canada but the public isn’t supportive of their views by and large. Alberta is the most like the US in terms of religion. I call it the Texas of Canada.
Our most popular Christian denomination is the Catholic Church (mainly in Quebec) followed by the United Church which is barely religious. Most Catholics don’t attend church except Christmas and Easter and they’re much more liberal than the Church is. The few that do are the pro-life sort but they attract few supporters willing to demonstrate at clinics or hospitals.
Our government just became the 2nd country in the world to ban gay conversion “therapy”. And we have government-sanctioned doctor-assisted suicide, gay marriage and got rid of prayer in the schools in the schools in the late 80s. We’re not as liberal as Europe but a lot more liberal than the US.
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Hehe yup. And ironically I don’t even think the Church of Satan believes in the devil’s existence, if I understand correctly.
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Not as close as you’d think.
And often at odds, usually these days over the issues of marriage equality and LGBTQ clergy.
From what I recall the Episcopal Church has been perpetually on the virge of cutting ties for decades. Tend to be politically and theologically well to the left of the Church of England.
But they’re generally about as close to the Catholics as the Anglicans. The more Anglican style churches have been leaving. So there’s now a separate Anglican Church in the US.
They actually seem to be closest to the Lutherans, to the point of sharing Clergy. And they’re very, very big on Ecumenism in general.
They were heavily influenced by Deism and Quakers when they split from the COE. And have been heavily influenced by an influx of progressive Catholics, especially Clergy since the 60s.
Then there’s a slightly different African American body of Churches. That with Anglo Catholic elements is the majority, liberal end of the church.
The remaining Anglican Rite churches, and a small Evangelical wing forming a conservative minority.
And ten tons weird running around in between.
So my church growing we had actual active duty Catholic Nuns, but then a Sunday School teacher who was an open Atheist. Who refused to attend services outside of singing in the choir. And occasionally a Quaker would give us a sermon about how the Arch Bishop of Canterbury was a dick. Or a robotics engineer would give a benediction about natural selection.
I don’t know if “not very religious” quite captures it.
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In the UK the Anglican church leadership is trying to stop a schism from happening between the progressive and conservative wings of the church. Neither side wants to be the ones who leave (losing the privileges of being a state religion) so they try to push the other side into leaving.
Some conservatives are rejoining the Catholic church despite that, so the leadership is trying to appease them, although I expect that would change if the Episcopal church left and threatened to take progressive Anglicans with them.
I may have stayed in the church for longer than I did if my local church wasn’t taken over by Evangelical conservatives (who see themselves as Protestants and obviously don’t want to join the Catholic Church), but I was pretty much an atheist at that point anyway.
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It’s somewhat similar in the US.
And it would be why they haven’t already cut ties. Mainline Protestant denominations in the US have been dealing with shrinking membership under pressure from the rise of the religious right and reframing of Evangelicalism as the “only” Christianity.
They don’t want to chase off their own conservative wing, who tend to be either Evangelical or view themselves as America’s Anglican Church. So haven’t pressed it.
More recently though Catholics jumping over as a result of the many scandals there, rising Hispanic membership, and a bunch of growth in often pretty Anglo Catholic and activist Black churches has started to reverse that.
While the more conservative congregations or members leave anyway.
I don’t know that it quite works that way.
The Episcopalians already left, it’s a distinct and independent denomination. Even using a different liturgy.
Part of the dispute is that the Episcopal Church of the US views itself as a participant, voluntarily, in the Anglican Communion. Not a subject of it, or part of The Anglican Church. This seems to be considered almost, but not quite, equivalent to their membership in other multi-Church bodies or relationships with other denominations.
Where as the Anglican side does not always see it that way.
So from the Episcopalian side. An Anglican is not already a part of their church.
They could go too. But the Episcopals could not simply take them along.
I realized I was an Atheist as a kid. Ultimately had a pretty fine time with it at that at that particular church. Where that mostly wasn’t bad, disqualifying or anything.
Never really felt any need to go to any church after my folks stopped making me go, but I’m still fascinated by religions, denominations and what have.
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I meant the Anglican communion, sorry for not being clear about that.
You could say the same about the Catholic Church, but it happens anyway.
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It is fascinating, in the Mr. Spock sense, all the schisms and factions and rivalries within the same imaginary world of pretend.
Schmaaarrrt. I like it.
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