An Illinois school district advocated for an elementary school to offer the “Satan Club” as an extracurricular educational program sponsored by the Satanic Temple of the United States.
The program for children from first to fifth grades, it will be taught by volunteers at Jane Addams Elementary School in Moline and will meet five times this year starting Thursday, say fliers circulating on social media.
According to the flyer, the club will consist of science projects, puzzles, games, arts, crafts, and outdoor activities in nature.
Illinois elementary “Satan After School” program.
Jane Addams Elementary School in Moline, Illinois allowing the Satanic Temple to host after-school games for children from grade one to five.
“Hey Kids, let’s have fun at After School Satan Club!”
MAREMMAMPESTATA! pic.twitter.com/3gOiwCBf7L
— El Gusty ⭐⭐⭐ 🧱 (@ElGusty99523701) January 14, 2022
The club says it will help children learn compassion and empathy, critical thinking, problem solving, creative expression and personal sovereignty.
The Satanic Temple, essentially a activist group and think tank rather than a religious institution, said the program is available in select public schools where “Good News” programs exist and is intended to be educationally enriching.
Members have no intention of converting children to Satanism.
“Proselytizing is not our goal, and we are not interested in converting children to Satanism,” says the temple about the program on its website.
“The Satan Club will focus on research free migration and rationalism, the scientific basis by which we know what we know about the world around us.
We prefer to give children an appreciation of the natural wonders that surround us, not a fear of the eternal horrors of another world.”
The flyer provoked a response from district leadership, who emphatically assured parents that “no teacher at Jane Addams School, nor any another district teacher is involved.”
“Fliers were not distributed to all students,” according to a letter from Rachel Savage, superintendent of Coal Valley Schools, to families in the district.
She said the space rental “was not generated by the district and is not affiliated with Jane Addams or the district.”
A district parent contacted the Satanic Temple after school club and told the group that the elementary school already offered an “eva buddy club child angelism” and wanted to bring her program to the school “to offer parents a choice of different viewpoints,” the superintendent said.
They were sent 30 flyers to the school from the Satanic Temple and were posted in the school lobbies, as were all flyers for organizations and events at the school that are “religious in nature”.
Furthermore, he pointed out that the board of education allows community use of its facilities and approves various agreements with local churches.
“Illegally denying your organization (point of sight) to pay the rent for our publicly funded institution, after school hours, subjects the district to a discrimination lawsuit, which we will not win, likely taking thousands upon thousands of taxpayer dollars, staff and resources from our teachers. classrooms,” Savage wrote.
The Satanic Temple says it sees Satan as a “mythical figure representing individual freedom,” according to its website. “Satanists should actively work to hone critical thinking and exercise reasonable agnosticism in all things,” the temple says. “Our beliefs must be malleable to the current best scientific understanding of the material world, never the other way around.”
Read more Man who killed two sisters by satanic pact to win lottery, receives Life imprisonment Salvadorans from the MS-13 sentenced to 40 years in prison for murdering a minor in a satanic ritual Nike sues rapper Lil Nas X for associating the “devil” with the brand’s shoes
