A Family That Prays Together

Hail Satan! I just joined The Satanic Temple, my 42-year-old daughter texted on a ‘till-that-point typical Wednesday. It stopped me right in the middle of my mid-morning channel surfing.

I thought I had let go of the concept of Satan around the same time I ditched the conservative Protestant faith I was raised in. Leaving the church hadn’t been difficult for me. I was a child of the 60s, and the repressive ideas of the church and my family didn’t match my own budding liberalism. I grew up during the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and Watergate. I was a freshman in high school when Roe v. Wade passed. I couldn’t take seriously the idea that a 2,000-year-old text had the answers to my world’s problems. But I have to admit, I was taken aback by my daughter’s new religious affiliation.

Much to my surprise, it seemed a lingering aversion to the Christian God’s adversary still had a grip on me. Some programming runs deep. Or maybe I was simply concerned with my daughter’s new-found religious fervor. I thought I’d raised her better. Still, as a good liberal parent, I didn’t want to respond before doing a little research, so I Googled The Satanic Temple.

The first thing up was a YouTube trailer for Hail Satan?, a 2019 documentary about the origins of the group. I learned that, among other things, members of The Satanic Temple, or TST to its friends, are heavily involved in political activism around issues of free speech and the separation of church and state. From this introduction to the group, I could already see why my daughter might have been pro-Satan…except for the Satan part. I was still struggling with that.

Since I didn’t want to rent the documentary to further my Satanic education, I decided to go to the source: The Satanic Temple website. The landing page is an understated, if predictable, black with red accents, and their tagline is Empathy. Reason. Advocacy. I’m not sure what I expected (maybe a severed goat head?) but this wasn’t it. The main temple is located in Salem, Massachusetts. Where else? The snarky voice in my head asked. It turns out, they have congregations all over the US and in at least five other countries. I was shocked, kind of, until I tried and failed to find out how many locations the Church of Scientology has. I’m not a mathematician, but I defy anyone to pin down that number.

As I tried to think of another cult-like group that might be simpler to count, I started to feel like a bit of a bigot. Why hadn’t I compared The Satanic Temple with the Southern Baptists, for example? (It turns out their numbers are down, with only 12,982,090 congregations in the US.) But right in the middle of my guilt session, the red banner across the top of the temple’s homepage commanded my attention: Donate to TST Health’s “Name Our Abortion Clinic” Fundraiser. What the heck?

Imagine my embarrassment when I clicked on the link for the fundraiser and learned that the contest is to name TST’s second abortion clinic. Had I been living under a rock…or a tombstone? Fortunately, TST provided a link to their Religious Reproductive Rights Campaign videos on YouTube. And that’s where I learned about the Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic. (Can I get a Hail Satan just for the name?) The best part of the YouTube campaign has to be the jingle. They have a jingle!

The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic performs the “religious abortion ritual” by partnering with an accredited pharmacy to deliver abortion drugs. The ritual involves the soon-not-to-be-parent reciting two of the temple’s tenets and a personal affirmation. These are “ceremoniously intertwined with the abortion.” This religious rite allows the person seeking the abortion to bypass waiting periods, viewing sonograms, and mandatory counseling, which groups like the World Health Organization have determined to be discriminatory practices. Given that TST has established religious abortion rites, these and other restrictions violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of the freedom of religion. The religious abortion ritual is performed in states that have adopted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

With the Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic in full swing, the temple is now raising funds to open a second clinic. Those who donate $666 or more get to propose a name for the new clinic. And anyone making a donation of any amount gets to vote on the proposed names. Just a few currently in the running are, “All Unplanned Pregnancies Are Caused BY Men Abortion Services,” “Mrs. Jerry Falwell Jr.s’ Pool Boy’s Satanic Abortion Clinic,” “Beelzabort The Preemptive Stork’s Abortion Clinic,” and “Ejaculate Misconception Family Unplanning.”

Honestly, they had me back at the clinic jingle, but if the reproductive freedom campaign weren’t enough, The Satanic Temple is involved in other liberal causes. Among their campaigns, TST has the Protect Children Project to raise awareness and change legislation around various forms of punishment used in schools; the After School Satan club, an after school program that promotes self-directed education; and Sober Faction, a recovery group that removes the religiosity and cult-like control of many recovery programs.

By the time I finished my deep dive into The Satanic Temple, I’d joined the group, bought a T-Shirt and a Baphomet statue, and contributed to the fundraiser. One more vote for  “The I Don’t Want To Give Birth To Another Twit Like Samuel Alito Abortion Clinic.” Catchy!

The last thing I needed to do was to respond to my daughter’s text: Hail Satan! We finally have a family religion!