Furious Mom Slams School Over Event, 'They Already Took God Out of Schools Now They're Going to Let Satan In'
Parents in a Pennsylvania school district say that schools are so skittish about Bible study on school grounds that the church needs to pay to bus kids to an off-campus location to do it.
Satanists, however, are reportedly free to use the facilities for their after-school activities.
According to a Saturday Fox News report, administrators with the Northern York County School District are allowing the Satanic Temple to host an event at Northern High School in Dillsburg — about 100 miles west of Philadelphia.
The back-to-school, after-hours event comes after a school board initially blocked an After School Satan Club at another school in the district in the spring.
For the unacquainted, the Satanic Temple purports to be an atheistic troll organization which just happens to openly worship satanic deities while also invoking the First Amendment’s religious protections to mount legal challenges against abortion restrictions and opposing prayer in public schools, among other things.
Lucien Greaves, co-founder the organization, said it’s hosting the event because his group is seeking “other religious representation.”
“We don’t decry or begrudge anybody having a prayer event or anything like that,” Greaves — whose real, non-demonic sounding legal name is Douglas Mesner — told WPMT-TV in York last week.
“It does become a problem, a serious problem, when you allow a back-to-school prayer event, but you don’t allow any other religious representation.”
Greaves was referring to the fact the Satanic Temple event is being passed off as counter-programming for a prayer night hosted by Dillsburg Community Worship and Prayer.
“We’re talking about upholding fundamental pillars of democracy and the First Amendment,” Greaves said.
Parents, you may not be surprised to learn, are less enthusiastic than Greaves is.
“They already took God out of schools now they’re going to let Satan in, it’s just crazy,” parent Jennifer McAllister told WPMT back when the group first tried to set up shop in the district back in April.
The school district said it doesn’t endorse activities but rents out its facilities to other organizations, thus washing its hands of the discussion.
“As a public school district, the use of our school facilities must be permitted without discrimination. We cannot and do not arbitrarily pick and choose which organizations may or may not use our facilities. If we allow one organization, we must allow all organizations,” the district said in a statement on its website.
“In approving any request, the school district does not endorse the activity of any outside organization that rents our facilities,” the statement continued. “Nor are these entities permitted to use the school district’s name or logo.”
However, one mom told Fox News that the district won’t allow Bible study on school premises.
“If they do a Bible study, the church has to pay to bus the students off of school grounds, and then they bring the students back,” Ashley Lynn Crider told “Fox & Friends First” on Monday.
“We send our kids to school to get an education. Anything beyond that is home life or in your community.
“It doesn’t matter what any child believes, or their family believes … this is public school,” she continued.
“We send our children to school to get an education, not for all this other stuff that is meant for outside of school.”
She told “Fox & Friends First” that when she tried to bring the back-to-school Satanic Temple event up at a recent school board meeting, she was shut down.
“They cut my mic off, I was mad,” Crider said. “They shut my mic off.”
“They don’t address anything at those meetings,” she added, saying that “nothing’s ever addressed.”
Meanwhile, she said representatives for the Satanic Temple at the meeting came from outside of the community.
“People that were there for the Satanic Club, like I said, they couldn’t even talk during that meeting because they’re not in the community,” she said.
The Western Journal has reached out to the Northern York County School District for comment.
The Satanic Temple is ostensibly pursuing the same aims as groups like the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
The FFRF is the litigious group of anti-religious killjoys that seems to show up whenever a school puts up a Nativity scene or has a prayer group, threatening to sue small-town school districts out of every dollar they’ll make in tax revenue for the next century if they don’t comply.
Now, school districts shy away from any constitutionally permitted expressions of faith on campus grounds out of fear lawyers from the FFRF, or some similar group, will descend upon them like a swarm of vultures.
In the spiritual vacuum that’s created, however, groups like the Satanic Temple have flourished. Pretending to be champions of free speech and religious expression, they mock Judeo-Christian values with paeans to Satan and Baphomet — but it’s really all just meant to be ironic, they swear.
If you haven’t seen what happens when you take God out of the classroom yet, let this be an eye-opener.
To the left, this isn’t about enforcing bland, neutral secularism. You don’t see the FFRF swooping down on the Satanic Temple, after all. They probably like it — and so do the majority of those who want prayer and Bible study to be driven out of our schools.
When God is removed, Satan fills the vacuum.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
