Satanic After-School Club Takes Aim at Christian Student Groups

The Satanic Temple recently opened an after-school “Satan Club” in a Moline, Illinois, elementary school, as part of its nationwide campaign to push back against the Christian Good News Clubs offered to schoolchildren after regular-hour classes.

Parents protested outside the Jane Addams Elementary School in Moline when the first after-school Satan Club met there last month.

Last Thursday, a few people came out to protest the club’s second meeting as well.

The Satanic Temple, which runs the program, said students would be offered activities such as science and crafts projects, puzzles and games — and that they would learn about benevolence, empathy, critical thinking, problem-solving and creative expression, too.

Lucien Greaves, the Satanic Temple spokesperson, told Fox News about the clubs, “I’m hoping that with our presence, people can see that good people can have different perspectives, sometimes on the same mythology, but not mean any harm.”

Greaves also said, “We’re not including items of religious opinion … We’re not teaching children about Satanism. They’re just going to know that this is taught by Satanists.”

The Satanic Temple is not hiding the fact that it created the clubs to take on the Christian club called the Good News Club — which has become its No. 1 nemesis.

Said Greaves, “The after-school Satan Clubs were conceived of in order to give an alternative to [the] religious indoctrination [of] after-school programs.”

Reece Kauffman, president of Child Evangelism, which operates the Good News Clubs, said of the Satanic Temple, “I cannot tell you what’s in their hearts, but they certainly are doing work that would be contrary to the Good News of Jesus Christ.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2001 that religious groups could operate after-class programs in public schools.

Good News Christian Clubs are now in about 5,000 schools nationwide.

An Addams School spokesperson released a statement saying it was not endorsing the Satan Club or the Good News Club. Yet because of the Supreme Court’s decision, it could not turn down any group that wanted to start an after-school program, it said.

Last month, Fox News Digital reached out to the Addams School district for comment about the Satan Club in Moline. A spokesperson said a flyer that had been placed within the school building was legitimate — but she stressed it was “not generated by the district, not distributed to all students, and not affiliated with any teacher in the district.” Candace Sountris, communications director, also said, “Community use of [the] school facility after school hours [is] approved by the Board of Education in accordance with IL School Code.”

Kauffman of Child Evangelism recently told Fox News, “We’re not trying to be against anyone. We’re simply trying to take the biblical Good News of the Gospel to the children.”

The Satanic Temple says it’s really an atheist organization, despite a statue depicting its leader as a tall human with a goat’s head and horns and two children looking on adoringly.

Its says its followers don’t believe in spiritual evil or a literal devil.

And for them, the devil is simply a symbol of “defiance, independence, wisdom and self-empowerment.”

The Bible however calls the devil the “father of lies” whose real power rests in his ability to deceive. Readers of the Bible know that the devil’s first appearance on creation’s stage is in the Garden of Eden, tempting Adam and Eve, and the infamous “Fall from Grace.”

Satan, in the form of a serpent, convinces the ancestral humans to defy God’s decree to not eat the fruit of a tree. It’s not the fruit that caused the problem — it was disobeying God.

Kauffman and other Christian theologians say the real spiritual danger is in believing Satan doesn’t exist.