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And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. – Deuteronomy 12:3
A recent article at the Republic Sentinel noted that members of the Satanic Temple of Iowa – yes, there is a Satanic Temple chapter in Iowa, because we don’t live in a secular culture anymore; we live in a neo-pagan one – recently received permission to erect a statue of the occult idol Baphomet on the first floor of the Iowa Capitol building near Christmas displays of the Nativity. Baphomet was surrounded by candles and holding a pentacle – an occult talisman containing the inverted pentagram associated with Satanism and that is the logo for the Satanic Temple.
As an organization, the Satanic Temple has been around only for about ten years. It views itself as a sort of alternative religion for people who resent the “oppression” of traditional religion, especially Christianity, which the Satanic Temple regularly mocks and taunts by demanding equal time with Nativity scenes at state capitols at Christmastime. Are Satanic Temple members devil-worshippers? Sort of. As I’ve written before,
Contrary to popular assumption, only a small minority of Satanists actually worships Satan. Most of them reportedly do not believe in a higher power; they see Satan himself as more metaphorical, a symbol of rebellion. They view their religion as a worshiping of the self, and believe that each individual is free to define his or her own moral code.
Today’s Satanism is largely what author Carl Trueman, Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College, calls expressive individualism, which holds that “human beings are defined by their individual psychological core, and that the purpose of life is allowing that core to find social expression in relationships. Anything that challenges it is deemed oppressive.” Sects of the self today include a revival of paganism and Satanism.
The Temple’s mission is ostensibly one of working toward “benevolent and compassionate” social justice, with a generous helping of such self-worship thrown in. But an unstated yet obvious part of its mission is to disempower Christians in the public and political square – hence its challenges to Christmas displays in political buildings.
Michael Cassidy is a Mississippi man who served as a pilot in the U.S. Navy, works as a flight instructor, and ran for Congress a year ago in his home state. His campaign website describes him as a “Christian conservative who loves our nation and is committed to preserving the blessings of liberty.” The Sentinel reported that Cassidy wanted to see the Satanic Temple display for himself. “I saw this blasphemous statue and was outraged,” he said. “My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted.”
Indeed he did. He took it upon himself to tear down the profane display, remove the idol’s head, and toss it in a trash can – after which he turned himself in to police officers and was charged with 4th-degree criminal mischief.
Cassidy told The Sentinel that he destroyed the shrine in order to “awaken Christians to the anti-Christian acts promoted by our government”:
The world may tell Christians to submissively accept the legitimization of Satan, but none of the founders would have considered government sanction of Satanic altars inside Capitol buildings as protected by the First Amendment. Anti-Christian values have steadily been mainstreamed more and more in recent decades, and Christians have largely acted like the proverbial frog in the boiling pot of water.
Correct on all counts. Yes, the Founders did not want the establishment of a “state religion,” but they would have found it incomprehensible that this wariness would result in government buildings hosting altars to Satan-worship. And yes, our culture has gradually marginalized Christian values and carried out what author Rod Dreher (Live Not By Lies, The Benedict Option) calls a “soft persecution” of Christians who have too passively endured it without enough righteous pushback. That day at the Iowa state Capitol, Cassidy decided to push back.
Cassidy also cited 1 John 3:8 as a motivation for smashing the false idol: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” He told the Sentinel that “Scripture exhorts us to think and act like Jesus Christ.” Many people think acting like Jesus means being supremely tolerant and nonjudgemental, but remember, Jesus angrily overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the Jerusalem Temple and ejected the blasphemers from that holy place. A state capitol building is not a sacred space, but Michael Cassidy found the Satanic Temple’s occupation of it with symbols of evil and the occult to be a perversion of its purpose to serve the public good.
For many, even some conservatives, this incident raises a serious point: what about the separation of church and state? What about the perceived hypocrisy of conservatives who condemn the left’s tearing down of monuments and who then turn around and tear down monuments they don’t like?
Some conservatives tried to straddle the fence on this issue. Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds wrote in a statement that she found the display “absolutely objectionable” but believes that in a free society, “the best response to objectionable speech is more speech.” Iowa Republican State Rep. Jon Dunwell, who is also an ordained minister, said that as a “follower of Christ” he found the statue “objectionable” but said he does not want “the state evaluating and making determinations about religions.”
As the Republic Sentinel noted,
Others nevertheless questioned whether the Constitution or the original intent of the founding fathers would allow for the existence of the shrine. Andrew Walker, an associate professor of Christian ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, noted in an analysis that the Satanic Temple does not maintain any “sincerely held Satanic beliefs.” He also asserted that the state should not promote any “outright celebration of evil, darkness, and perversity” and that “moral evil has no intrinsic rights” within a Christian and historically Western legal framework.
Rod Dreher, author of Live Not By Lies and The Benedict Option, among many other books, mused about this issue on his Substack page, and it is worth quoting him at length because he thoughtfully sums up the truth about the Satanic Temple’s intent and Michael Cassidy’s protest:
The United States is a country now where we oversee the removal of statues of figures — even Founding Fathers, like Thomas Jefferson, whose statue was taken out of New York City Hall in 2021 — that the woke find intolerable… but we erect statues, however temporary, honoring Satan.
[…]
There’s no point in pretending that what Cassidy did is compatible with a liberal political order. It’s not — but then, the mobs tearing down Confederate statues (as distinct from elected officials removing them lawfully) aren’t either, but many people in our society celebrated the latter. I am personally troubled by this, in the sense that I believe that a diverse society like ours requires a significant degree of religious tolerance…
Yet the abstractions of liberalism must reach a limit at some point. We reached and passed it a long time ago with regard to the teaching of sexuality and gender theory to children, under the guise of tolerance. And the construction of a statue honoring Satan crosses a line that I think none of us should be willing to cross.
I believe, of course, that Satan is real, and that there are, and will be, real world effects to honoring him in this way… If Christians believe that Satan exists, then you would no more tolerate that vile effigy in the legislature than you would tolerate a statue paying homage to Adolf Hitler. The Satanic Temple has admitted that it doesn’t see Satan as a real being, but rather as a symbol. I think they’re lying about that, but never mind. Michael Cassidy understands that the spiritual power of that evil statue is real, and that there are higher obligations on the Christian than are allowed for under liberalism’s rules.
Even if you don’t believe that Satan actually exists, and you consider him to be merely a symbol, then why would you tolerate this statue? In the symbolic matrix that produced the figure of Satan, he symbolizes ultimate evil… Not just evil, but Evil…
Religious tolerance has worked in America for so long because nobody ever thought to push the boundaries like the Satanic Temple does. If sustaining liberalism means tolerating an image honoring a deity who symbolizes things like the rape of children, Auschwitz, the gulags, chattel slavery, and any and all evil you can imagine, then to hell with liberalism.
[…]
If being a good classical liberal means that I have to tolerate reverence in a public space to a god that stands for Evil, then I am not a classical liberal… There is no society that can be called “good” in which an effigy of Satan is honored in the public square.
Like Dreher, when I learned of this controversy my reflexive classical liberalism kicked in and I initially wrestled with the philosophical and moral quandary of it; but I quickly came to wholeheartedly endorse Dreher’s conclusion and Michael Cassidy’s protest. Classical liberalism should not be a suicide pact. A society that gives equal weight to Good and Evil out of a misguided sense of fairness and tolerance and diversity will quickly find itself overrun by Evil, because Evil will exploit the fair-mindedness and tolerance of classical liberals in order to get first a foot in the door, then to smash the door off its hinges and subdue the whole of a classically liberal civilization. The Republicans like Iowa Gov. Reynolds and Rep. Dunwell, who think Evil will respect or be restrained by their fair-minded neutrality, are not spiritually prepared for the winds that will blow then.
When Michael Cassidy trashed the Satanic Temple’s mocking altar, he took a courageous, righteous stand in defense of the Good over Evil, and in defense of Western civilization (which used to be known as Christendom) over the narcissistic amorality of today’s paganism. And I stand with him.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.
False Gods and False Idols Southern California had Salse idol the Quetzalcoatl dedicated to a Bloodthirsty Cult that ripped peoples hearts out the Washington Monument is Abolsk which were built by Egyptians and the Pentagram the Upside-Down Star of Baphomet and the Masons and their many Pagan Symbols the Eastern Star and even the 70’s Peace Logo the Chicken Footprint its Christian Cross turned upside down and the Hang Loose hand sign the Horns on El Diablo/Satan
It would take a “Christian” Antifa/BLM type movement, and a sympathetic Oliver Cromwell style government to destroy all of those idols, and to what purpose.
They are clearly attempting to prevent Christians from celebrating the birth of Christ.
They claim “ They view their religion as a worshiping of the self, and believe that each individual is free to define his or her own moral code.”
Which is deliberately designed to criticise freedom of religion, just like a certain commenter who seems to have thankfully disappeared, he attacked anybody who even considered religion to bring something positive.
Merry Christmas everyone.
The Apostle said an ‘An idol is nothing, although it does represent evil.’ The Israelites were commanded to smash idols, we (Christians) are not. Go ahead, burn a Koran, or a Book of Mormon, knock the head off a statue, act like the God hating left.
we who follow Jesus are to act like He did. HE desroyed kenty of idols, demons, sicknesses, lies during His time here on hearth in His physical body.
On what BIBLICAL basis do you claim “we are not” to smash idols? We are told to tear down every false thing that dares to lift itself up abve our Lord.
Go ahead and smash idols, act like Antifa and BLM, I don’t care.
How many idols does a Christian need to smash to prove he is the really a Christian?
There is ‘nothing new under the sun,’ we’ve seen this sort of showboating, in the past. Remember Billy Sunday? Billy Sunday use to rail against demon liquor, shout at the Devil, throw chairs across the stage, and generally make a spectacle of himself. When he wasn’t showboating, before adoring fans at venues like Madison Square Garden, Billy Sunday would hobnob with sports and Hollywood celebrities. 1 Timothy 2:1-4 encourages Christians to live ‘Quiet and peaceful lives,’ so ‘That men may come to the knowledge of truth.’
Reminiscent of Elmer Gantry.
With these people – it always ends up with Elmer Gantry behavior. It is the greatest problem with an American conservative mindset that these folk always gang up to take over for “jesus’. And it is just themselves showing out their own faults.
Not interested in this tent show.
The man that did the Idol smashing ran for political office, I’m very suspicious of motives, of anyone aspiring to be a politician.
Moses destroyed the Golden Calf, turning it into dust. The idea was that idolatry, as typically depicted by statues, was a rebellion against God. Co-workers and I were once touring the Notre Dame U campus with a professor, and he pointed out a large outdoor statue there depicting Moses holding the Tablets and stomping on the Golden Calf. Somebody over there didn’t grasp the concept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Moses_(University_of_Notre_Dame)
To define a basis for a religion as, “each individual is free to define his or her own moral code” is a dangerous philosophy for anyone that isn’t alone on an isolated island with no outside contact. People who live together can’t survive without some semblance of rules.
On another point, haven’t Christian symbols been ripped down from Gov. buildings by minorities shouting “separation of church and state”? Why is Satan exempt?
satan is NOT exempt. But many would like him to be. absolutely that he is totally completely finally and effectively DEAD, He was soundly and fully trounced at the birth, life execution, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He has yet to get the ol heave ho into that lake of fire, but it is all his, and inescapable.
Bravo to Mr. Cassidy for standing up against the darkness that imprisons us. We need more people like him.
The left and progressives have waged a constant war to “secularize” society and demonize Christianity and organized religion for sixty years. I’ll never understand why everyone accepts the leftist lie of “Separation of Church and State” when, in fact, the first amendment says only “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. It says absolutely nothing about the practice of voluntary prayer in government or public facilities which was common practice for most of our history. And it ignores the fact that we were founded as a Christian nation, with “God” embedded in every government institution, in all of our founding documents, on our currency, and truth sworn “on the Bible” in every court in the land for our entire history. So there is no legal basis to exclude religion from schools or government; only that there can be no “state” religion and the freedom of all religions is constitutionally protected. The “Separation” idea is an invented dogma that, unfortunately, even most Republicans have bought into.
Now the same marxists and progressives want to say that the worship of Satan is protected. Another lie. “Satanism” is not a religion and there is and has never been any precedent to claim that it is. So it is not protected and does not and should not receive the same constitutional protection as any other religion. Liberals claiming so are again just ignoring the law and perverting the language to further their own agenda. We need to stop allowing them to do so……..
Thanks Stan. Great comment!
Onward, Christian sildier.
If satan’s statue can stand, then his ideology of death and injustice can stand.
We already allow the murder of the live pre-born children.
We already allow porn and smut to be thrown at our children.
We already allow dangerous drugs to flow into inner city slums to kill and destroy youth.
Time to draw a line in the sand. No, satan. No more.
quote: The Satanic Temple has admitted that it doesn’t see Satan as a real being, but rather as a symbol.
so without a real god, they are not and cannot be a religion. So why not tear down their idol? If their wad of paper and paste is not a real being, then what’s the problem?
Here IS the problem:: they hate all who DO follow Jesus, and this is simply an
in yer face” insult attempt. They are mocking and scorning. So is tearing apart their paper and glue figure. Since THEY say its nothing real, so what?
In the Book of Kings we find the figure of Gen. Jehu.
Jehu was the fulfillment of the prophet Elijah’s warnings to the ancient Hebrews.
Jehu completely destroyed the House of Ahab.
He killed all of Ahab’s sons. He trampled Jezebel to death with his horse and left her to be eaten by wild dogs.
He slaughtered all of the priests devoted to Baal and reduced their temples to rubble.
In short……….Jehu was my kind of guy.
AND so is Michael Cassidy.
God bless him………….I’m pleasantly surprised that the FBI hasn’t killed him yet.
Living by one’s own “moral code” and the extent of “self-love” espoused by these individuals does not bode well for society’s well-being. This credo is evil by human standards as well as God’s.
How soon will they have them Dancing to a Golden Calf again?
The Blessed Hope, not the Blasted Hope, and The End of Disappointment. Leadership matters. Most leaders fall short and don’t keep their promises, they have shortcomings., many lacking the will to do the right thing,
Don’t put your hopes in judges, emperors, kings, and homegrown rulers. They don’t deliver on their promises. Only a few Presidents actually delivered on what they promised.
The Messiah, God’s promised King actually delivers on His promises.
There is a King who can establish perfect perfection on earth. God’s Messiah is the leader we are looking for. because people definitely need rescuing.
Ten Commandments not allowed in government buildings, Nativities, I dunno.
First ten Amendments? Probably not.
rainbow people and blm cults? Welcome!
‘Til we throw every leftist out of our country, the shiite will continue.
The left wants to tear down statues of great Americans and Confederates and replace them with statues of Satan, who is probably the closest thing to their god. It is like the golden calf that Moses had to discourage the Israelites from worshiping. This is what we have come to. Worshiping pagan gods and despising the founders of our country.