After School Satan Clubs gaining popularity, looking to extend reach

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – With support from the courts, After School Satan Clubs are becoming increasingly popular alternatives to religious clubs in US primary schools, and organizers are working to expand their reach into high schools and colleges, the Hill reports. The clubs are associated with the Satanic Temple organization and began in 2020; the Satanic Temple itself was founded in 2014 and claims its mission is to “encourage benevolence and empathy, reject tyrannical authority.”

While naming the clubs after Satan, organizers claim they are not trying to make children become Satanists but, rather, to teach them “compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason” and that “beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.”

Earlier this month the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania agreed that the state’s Saucon Valley School District must allow the After School Satan Club to meet in district facilities: this legal win was heralded by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which represented the Satanic Temple in the case as “a victory for free speech and religious freedom,” the Hill reports.

In a statement to the Hill, June Everett, campaign director of the After School Satan Club said a planned new partnership with the Secular Student Alliance is expected to help extend the After School Satan Club’s reach to higher education schools.

“[Secular Student Alliance’s] specialty is really college level and high school kids. So with their partnership, we hope to use them to help us get into more high schools and colleges,” Everett said.

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