Oklahoma has, some sources say, the dubious distinction of having the greatest number of strong tornadoes per unit area in the U.S. One tornado that won’t hit the state, however, is a storm of satanic “ministers” in government schools, says Oklahoma’s top education official. The satanists are, though, announced Superintendent Ryan Walters, “welcome to go to Hell.”
Walters comments came after Satanic Temple representatives said they were prepared to put their ministers in public educational institutions if a proposed school-chaplain bill becomes law.
The same kind of hellish dispute has arisen in Florida. After signing school-chaplain legislation into law recently, Sunshine State Governor Ron DeSantis said that satanists are banned from the program, explaining that their beliefs are “not a religion.”
As for the Sooner State legislation, The Oklahoman reports, “A bill that will allow public schools to hire faith-based chaplains or accept them as volunteers is advancing through the Legislature with some major additions.”
“Senate Bill 36 has been approved by the Oklahoma House of Representatives and now advances to the Senate for consideration,” the paper continues.
As for the changes, some “of the bill’s language has remained largely the same,” The Oklahoman also informs. “It would still require chaplains to pass a background check and they would need no certification from the Oklahoma Department of Education.”
“But new requirements were added to the measure before the recent House vote,” the site adds. “Notably, under the newly amended bill, chaplains are prohibited from proselytizing….”
This nonetheless didn’t sit well with the satanists and other secular forces. As Fox News reported Thursday:
Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters took a dig at The Satanic Temple (TST) on Wednesday after the organization said they would place ministers in public schools if Senate Bill (SB) 36 becomes law.
“In Oklahoma, we have conservative values. President Joe Biden and the National Education Association want Christianity out of the classroom and are advocating for our kids to have zero morality and faith,” Walters told Fox News Digital in a statement.
“Let me be crystal clear: Satanists are not welcome in Oklahoma schools, but they are welcome to go to hell,” the Republican superintendent said.
…TST is already preparing to deploy its “ministers” in public schools if it [SB36] becomes law….
As for the debate surrounding the aforementioned new Florida law, Governor DeSantis has weighed in definitively. “Some have said that if you do a school chaplain program, that, somehow, you’re going to have satanists running around in all our schools. We’re not playing those games in Florida,” Fox News quotes him as stating. “That is not a religion. That is not qualified to be able to participate in this.”
In response, TST co-founder Lucien Greaves told Fox News Digital that “DeSantis is unaware of how the law works and unaware that the bill he signed into law ‘does in fact allow Satanic chaplains in schools….’”
This is a common and fashionable view — one embraced, in fact, by many judges. It’s also wrong.
To fully understand this issue, five factors must be explored:
1. What the Constitution states.
2. What state constitutions dictate.
3. What is “establishment” and what is not.
4. What constitutes a “religion”?
5. The difference between freedom of religion and government showcasing of religion.
Many cite the First Amendment when making their “separation of church and state case.” Yet not only is the quoted phrase not in the Constitution (it is, however, in the 1936 Soviet Constitution!), but forgotten is that the First Amendment only prohibits Congress — our federal legislature — from religious “establishment.”
The courts have, however, dishonestly applied this to all levels of government via a judicial rationalization called the “theory of incorporation”; this said, state constitutions generally mirror the federal one by also proscribing establishment.
Yet this merely constrains government from “establishing” an official church. If it meant that all religious expression must be absent from government — as many claim — the men who wrote the First Amendment (the Founders) wouldn’t have opened the first Congress, in 1789, with exclusively Christian prayers. But they did. Conclusion:
“Religion” can be in government institutions, as it has been during our entire history.
But then, what is “religion”?
If we’re to thus label satanism, then can Nazism register as a “religion” and place its “ministers” in schools?
If some would counter Nazism isn’t deity-oriented (note: the German Nazis actually were “aggressive neo-pagans”), consider that TST emphasizes that it, in fact, does not believe in God or Satan, but merely considers the latter a metaphor.
Regardless, the notion that any and every concept of “religion” must be afforded public-square equal time has already bred inanity such as government-arena Festivus poles and “Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster” displays. The idea is, Cloward-Piven-style, to overload the system with nonsense so that people will agree to purge religion from the public square entirely — and TST’s actions are part of this.
But this strategy can be easily neutralized by upholding a simple principle:
The right to freedom of religion does not equate to the right to the equal government showcasing of religion.
Asserting otherwise is like saying that government is “abridging” speech if it doesn’t pair the Lincoln Memorial’s words — that our nation was “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” — with pro-tyranny and pro-slavery sentiments. Whether the matter is speech or religion, you can say and believe whatever you wish. That doesn’t mean that we have to give your ideas a place in government spaces.
If we can’ grasp this simple fact and the legal rationale for keeping the purest representation of evil, satanism, out of our schools, we really should wonder: Has the American experiment failed?
