Faith and education leaders are denouncing plans for an After School Satan Club at a Tennessee elementary school but said they’d follow the law and permit the organization hosting the club to satisfy.
Around 40 members of the religion community in Memphis stood united with leaders at Memphis-Shelby County Schools on Wednesday to criticize the planned club and to query The Satanic Temple’s intentions in offering it, based on the Commercial Appeal. The faith community and educators also desired to make it clear that students would want signed permission slips to attend and to precise support for religious organizations which have partnered with the district, the newspaper reported.
“You see the faith-based community standing here,” said board chair and native pastor Althea Greene, who wore a clerical collar. “We’re going to get up and we’re going to be vocal. Satan has no room on this district.”
The Satanic Temple plans to host the club at Chimneyrock Elementary School in Cordova. It will begin meeting Jan. 10 in the college’s library and run through the spring semester, based on an announcement Tuesday posted on social media.
A flyer concerning the club says the Satanic Temple is a nontheistic religion that views Satan “as a literary figure who represents a metaphorical construct of rejecting tyranny and championing the human mind and spirit.”
It says it doesn’t try to convert children to any religious ideology but offers activities that “emphasize a scientific, rationalistic, non-superstitious worldview.”
Memphis-Shelby County Schools said in a press release that the district would rent out the space to the nonprofit organization per its policy.
Since the announcement, interim Superintendent Toni Williams said some have demanded that the district ban all faith-based organizations from schools, but that will not occur.
“As a superintendent, I’m duty sure to uphold our board policy, state laws, and the Constitution,” she said in the course of the event. “But let’s not be fooled. Let’s not be fooled by what we’ve seen previously 24 hours, which is an agenda, initiated to ensure that we cancel all faith-based organizations that partner with our district.”
