The club’s impending launch has already elicited a protest by a prayer group, whose leader claims that the situation was “highly offensive to Catholic sensibility.”
A new After-School Satan Club is expected to open its doors in Chesapeake, Virginia, later this month.
The first meeting of the club, set up under the auspices of The Satanic Temple, is expected to take place on December 15 at B.M. Williams Primary School in the US.
A flyer that advertises the club’s launch invited kids to “have fun” and engage in science and community service projects, “nature activities”, “puzzles and games” and “arts and crafts”.
The message contained in the flyer specifically noted that The Satanic Temple is a non-theistic religion that merely regards Satan as a literary figure representing a “metaphorical construct of rejecting tyranny and championing the human mind and spirit.”
“After School Satan Club does not attempt to convert children to any religious ideology,” the flyer stated. “Instead, The Satanic Temple supports children to think for themselves.”
Chesapeake Public Schools Superintendent Jared Cotton told parents in a statement that the building use request submitted by the club to hold meetings during after-school hours has been approved by the district, adding that this is permitted under the existing policies, local media outlets reported.
However, not all parents seemed thrilled by this development, and a prayer group assembled outside the B.M. Williams Primary School on Monday to protest the club, with the group’s leader Steve Scheerbaum telling media that the situation is “highly offensive to Catholic sensibility.”
“The only thing I could really compare it to, to somebody who wouldn’t understand why we are outraged, it would be roughly the equivalent if like a bunch of Black students were at the school and they have an after-school KKK club, a bunch of Jewish students were at the school, and they have an after-school Nazi club,” he claimed.
The After School Satan Club in Chesapeake is far from the first such club opened by The Satanic Temple in the United States and far from the first to attract negative attention from concerned parents.
A prayer rally was held in Greensboro, North Carolina, earlier this year in protest against an After-School Satan Club gathering inside Joyner Elementary School.
Catholics highly offensive to sensibility.