Satanists Unknowingly Reveal What's in Store for Them with Opening-Ceremony Antics of 'SatanCon'
One supposes it was bound to happen: Just as geekery built up enough momentum to become cool and make Comic-Con a yearly Woodstock-like event for those who have strong opinions on Kirk vs. Picard or on which Doctor Who best piloted the TARDIS through time and space, Satan has enough footing in the United States that his followers felt the need for a SatanCon.
Just in case you needed another reason to stay away from Boston, The Satanic Temple threw itself a shindig there this weekend. Meant to mark the 10th anniversary of the Temple, the event went viral after speakers tore up the Bible on stage, rent a “Thin Blue Line” flag in protest of the police, and held seminars on “self-pleasure” and “reclaiming the trans body,” according to Fox News.
In case you’re unfamiliar with The Satanic Temple, it claims to be a purely atheistic legal troll organization which just happens to have a preoccupation with the Prince of Darkness, who its members swear doesn’t really exist. Which is why they held a convention with his name on it. Because he’s non-existent. Right.
If you’ve heard of the group, it’s usually because it’s filed a lawsuit against some municipality or another, bending the First Amendment’s religious protections into a form none of the Founding Fathers would have endorsed.
Most recently, it made news by declaring abortion a sacrament of the non-theistic church and suing Indiana for violating its rights with the state’s abortion ban, arguing that the church’s tenets that “one’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.” Of course, if the Temple were purely atheistic, that just makes those words an opinion, not a holy writ.
But again, The Satanic Temple members swear Satan is non-existent and just being used in an allegorical sense. Which is why they needed to do this at the opening ceremony of this weekend’s SatanCon:
Satanists held an opening ceremony at 10th anniversary of Satancon in Boston Massachusetts.
Organizers say it the largest satanic gathering in history.
Bibles and Thin Blue Line flags were destroyed. pic.twitter.com/MP3mJ1Lozd
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) April 28, 2023
The group has long-standing ties to Boston. In 2016, according to the Catholic News Agency, the Boston City Council denied the Temple’s request for a satanic “invocation” before meetings began.
[firefly_poll]
Boston’s current mayor, Democrat Michelle Wu, was a member of the Council at the time — and SatanCon was apparently dedicated to her “for her unconstitutional efforts to keep TST out of Boston’s public spaces.”
Two years earlier, the group held a “black mass” on the campus of Harvard University.
“The Satanic Temple doesn’t offer an explanation of a ‘black mass’ on its website,” CNA reported. “However, it has been widely reported that a black mass, which historically includes the desecration of a eucharistic Host, is an inverted parody of the Catholic Mass.”
The Archdiocese of Boston said it was responding with “intense prayer” and urged individual Catholics not to protest the event.
“At the direction of the cardinal [Sean O’Malley], we are approaching it through a response balanced and focused on prayer,” a spokesman said.
“We ask Catholics not to organize or encourage others to go to the event to protest. It will only make it more prominent and give the organizers the attention they seek,” the archdiocese said in a news release.
Which is certainly one way for Christians to approach this: Don’t lend gravitas to an otherwise silly gathering of arrogant, theistically confused individuals by shining the spotlight on them.
After all, this was held in the very foreboding, very satanic Marriott Copley Place, which boasts on its website that, “Each of our reimagined hotel rooms and suites features sleek decor, platform beds, spa-like bathrooms, and remarkable city views” and that it has “70,000 square feet of versatile event space, enhanced by expert planners and one of the largest ballrooms in New England.”
At this conglomerate-owned den of iniquity, Satanic congregants gathered for three days to hear lectures like “Sins of the Flesh: Satanism and Self-Pleasure” (delivered by Eric Sprankle, a “sexuality studies” prof at Minnesota State University-Mankato), “Hellbillies: Visible Satanism in Rural America” (taught by Ash Schade, Huntington, West Virginia, woman who identifies as a man but became quasi-famous after having a baby fathered by someone she met on gay dating service Grindr); and “Reclaiming the Trans Body: A/theistic strategies for Self-Determination and Empowerment” (this one taught by someone who both identifies as transgender and draws a salary from a taxpayer-funded institution; this time, it was Devi. B. Dillard-Wright, a University of South Carolina-Aiken philosophy professor).
However, here’s the problem with Christians shrugging and going on with our lives, assuming these ludicrous trolls will be treated as a carnival sideshow. Say what you will about the organization and its members, The Satanic Temple has been remarkably adept at spreading the gospel of Satan into American society under the guise of fatuousness.
Notice what got ripped up during SatanCon: the Bible, which you’d expect, and the “Thin Blue Line” flag. Huh? Where in the Bible does it specifically talk about American police? You can extrapolate certain passages, perhaps, but the message is clear: The enemy isn’t Christianity or religious belief, but instead righteous authority.
Mind you, the group still believes that there is authority, else it wouldn’t be working through the court system for abortion rights and satanic prayer groups in public schools, etc. They believe the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment entitles them to this — despite the fact Satanic Temple members insist, sometimes literally in their next breath, that they aren’t a religion and have no belief in the supernatural.
This isn’t a bunch of cosplayers in the dark arts. It’s a conflagration of people actively encouraging defiance to God’s Word. Those who write it off as witless, preposterous performance art fail to see that, at least for the moment, it’s working. America has a SatanCon — and not only that, it sold out.
Now, this isn’t to insinuate that God can be outdone by a coven of Bible-rippers gathered in a Boston Marriott, something Christians ought to keep in mind when measuring our response to SatanCon:
God is bigger ?❤️?
— aimeecabonikolov (@AimeeCaboN) April 28, 2023
God’s word has out lived every single attempt to silence it. If you know the text, you know the ending?
— L Hazard (@LHazard7) April 28, 2023
God’s word is pretty clear on what He thinks of SatanCon devotees (Isaiah 45:20: “’Gather together and come; assemble, you fugitives from the nations. Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save'”) and what will happen to them (Revelation 21:8: “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars — they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death”).
This is what’s in store for those who rebel against God’s Word. Period. Full stop.
What the members of The Satanic Temple don’t seem to realize is that their antics at SatanCon actually reveal what’s in store for themselves — attempting to destroy God’s word, they’re only surrendering themselves to ultimate destruction.
And that’s why we should pray for them — and for the United States.
The problem isn’t that His Word is somehow superable by ripping up a few Bibles and “Thin Blue Line” flags, then giving a few professors from minor state universities a bit of publicity by way of these risible lectures.
The issue, instead, is that The Satanic Temple members want to drag as many people down with them as they possibly can — and they want to do that by eroding, then erasing, America’s Judeo-Christian roots.
Your immediate reaction might be furor — but instead, it would be far more productive to fall to your knees and call upon His name. Pray that those at SatonCon see the error of their ways. More importantly, pray they don’t lead others into error.
It’s all funny, non-theistic trollery until it’s time to meet your Maker. Then it’s not so humorous, no matter how many people are taking the down escalator with you.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
