A Satanic offensive is taking place in America.
It can be seen not only in large cities and liberal strongholds, but in small communities like Belle Plaine, Minnesota.
This city served as the stage for a highly symbolic sequence of events. In April, officials there approved plans for a Satanic monument to be erected in a free speech area of the town’s Veterans Memorial Park. The effort was a project of the Satanic Temple, based in Salem, Massachusetts, and a local religious freedom group. The sponsors designed, fundraised and built a symbol-laden monument which was to have been the first Satanic monument on public property in United States history.
The move was met with significant opposition by townspeople and concerned citizens all across the nation. Over 25,000 people signed one petition asking for its rejection. A recent protest attracted nearly 300 people to the site. The vigorous opposition led the City Council to vote on July 17 to abolish the park’s free speech zone. The Satanists’ move was defeated.
Not a Case of Religious Liberty
What carried the day was protesting.
Most of these fights across America are being presented as simple cases of religious freedom. In Belle Plaine, the Satanists claimed that since the park had a much-beloved monument of a soldier praying over a grave with a cross, the alien Satanic monument should enjoy an equal right to be present in the free speech zone.
However, the real issue in this controversy goes far beyond religious freedom or freedom of expression. It is best not to waste time arguing about these freedom issues since it allows the enemy to choose the battlefield. Religious freedom is only being used as a pretext for Satanists to obtain their goal. And their real goal is much more sinister than the equal placement of a monument.
Looking for Acceptance of the Unacceptable
The real issue is acceptance of the devil.
The real issue is all about the mainstreaming of Satanism in America. Much as the same-sex “marriage” debate was about acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle, so also Satanic groups seek social acceptance.
Indeed, this is what the Satanists themselves declare. For them, it has nothing to do with religious practices. Many of them even allege they have none. They simply want to mainstream Satanism so that it will be viewed as normal.
Indeed, the devil is the last great victim of discrimination in America. He represents all that is evil, hideous and macabre. As long as the devil is rejected in the minds of people anywhere, there remains some objective distinction between good and evil.
From time immemorial, Satan has been abhorred. There has always been a barrier of horror that separates him from mankind. Satanic groups now want to tear down this last barrier of moral health to overwhelm the crumbling ramparts of the moral order.
The Satanic Offensive
This explains the new Satanic offensive. The target is the moral order, especially as upheld by Christian civilization. The fight is not new in itself since Satanic symbols and lyrics have long pervaded modern culture. What is new is its more open expression.
Open adherents of Satan are now demanding space in the public square. Satanic groups have increasingly been holding high-profile staged events, even in Bible-belt areas, that aim to create a sense of normality around the abnormal Satan.
It is truly an offensive. It involves not just one Satanist group but a whole spectrum of groups in which each has its role in the overall battle to secure social acceptance.
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There are the dark Satanists who indeed worship Satan in macabre ceremonies that frighten the public. These radicals make Luciferians, and more moderate Satanists, seem more reasonable and acceptable to the mainstream. Finally, there are even “enlightened” Satanists that claim they do not worship Satan at all, but merely use his image and symbols to represent tenets of reason and science.
Different Tactics
These groups employ different tactics. Thus, some groups, for example, have concentrated on merely using the legal system to advance their goals.
This is the case of the Satanic Temple. It has focused on making inroads by taking advantage of religious freedom provisions to score symbolic victories. They arranged, for example, to set up After School Satan Clubs in elementary schools across the nation to counteract the influence of after school Christian clubs. They have also tried to set up hideous Satanic statues next to Ten Commandments monuments on public land.
In Belle Plaine, the Temple first obtained the removal of the cross monument and then accepted its return together with its Satanic monument.
Other Satanists are much more aggressive in their behaviors and make no attempt to hide their contempt for the Church. They organize, for example, caricatures of the Catholic Mass, called Black Masses, which are openly blasphemous and sacrilegious, even to the point of attempting (unsuccessfully) to desecrate a consecrated host.
One group in Oklahoma City held strange ceremonies on the street in front of a Catholic church, in which they defiled, with fake blood, a statue of the Virgin Mary on Christmas Eve. Another group set up a Satanic church in an upscale family shopping area in Spring, Texas.
The True Goal: Numb the Resistance
These Satanists care little if they win or lose the concrete fight over the monument, the statue, the Black Mass, or whatever. Using the false argument of religious freedom, they will seek to remove a cross or religious symbol in the public square, If they win, the hated cross will be gone. If they lose, they will strive to put up their monument with equal exposure.
But all this is insignificant to them. They are after much larger rewards. Their true strategic goal is the framed debate, with its substantial media exposure and its accompanying tragic numbing of the fibers of resistance in the souls of many.
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Belle Plaine monuments and Oklahoma City Black Masses are not aimed at attracting a large number of followers–very few ever show up. Rather, they seek to put Satan in the news and make Satanists accepted at the table. They try to wear down the resistance of Christians who oppose their offensive actions. They gradually hope to win a reluctant acceptance on the part of the general public tired of fighting against them.
Protest: The Most Effective Action
Many Christians have tried to oppose the Satanic offensive through legal proceedings. While such actions are welcome and are sometimes successful, they cannot be the only line of defense. Some judges may rule favorably, but there will always be a federal judge somewhere to side with the Satanists.
The most effective means of action is public, legal, prayerful, and peaceful protest. Since the battlefield is the hearts of Americans, it is in the court of public opinion that the real fight takes place. Protest denies the Satanists the acceptance they crave. Protest nourishes and invigorates the fibers of resistance Satanists seek to numb. Regardless of the outcome, if the protests are fervent enough, the bad publicity generates results that frustrate the Satanist goals and often ends in Christian victory.
This can be seen in three ways.
(1) Direct Victory
When a protest is fervent enough, it often stimulates authorities to find the means to take action. This is what happened with the Satanic Temple’s Black Mass scheduled at Harvard University for May 12, 2014. Thousands of students and Catholics processed through the streets of Cambridge to protest this blasphemous act from being staged on campus. Tens of thousands signed petitions. The event was canceled.
And this is what happened July 17, 2017, when city officials eliminated the free speech zone in the Veterans’ Memorial Park.
(2) Reversing the Victim Game
When the protest is fervent enough, it has the effect of depriving the Satanists of the stage they demand to push their victim narrative. In fact, the victim game is reversed. People begin to see the townspeople, Catholics or other offended parties as the victims of authorities that deliver top-down decisions against the wishes of those they are supposed to represent.
Again regardless of the outcome, the Satanists come to be seen as the imposers and oppressors that they are. This is the bitter case of the Pensacola City Council, which allowed the Satanic Temple to deliver the opening invocation on July 14, 2016.
Sometimes this perception of new Christian victims is enough to win the case. At other times, the Satanists may win a victory, but it is a pyrrhic victory, that leaves a nasty aftertaste. Even a court victory can represent social defeat for them. It results in rejection by the general public, not the acceptance which is their true goal.
(3) Making the Satanists Retreat
Finally, when Satanists perceive an overwhelming rejection of their actions, they often retreat. Or, they are forced to beat a dead horse by carrying on a program with no future.
When the Greater Church of Lucifer set up shop in Spring, Texas, the protests against the intrusion turned local people and merchants against them. The social rejection eventually led to the Satanists’ abandoning the location they had rented.
Similarly, the bad publicity drummed up when 103,000 people signed a petition against an After-School Satan Club in Port Defiance, Washington, was so intense that two weeks after its launch, not a single student signed up.
Protests Block the Satanists’ Goal
Thus, protest is fundamental in the fight against the Satanist offensive. The main thing to never forget is that social acceptance is the Satanists’ goal. Thus, protest is an excellent form of free speech that can be extremely effective in denying this acceptance. Legal, prayerful, and peaceful protests offend no one’s rights. In their strengthening of the moral fibers and the natural horror for the devil in people’s souls, protests help assure a social victory, regardless of the actions taken by authorities.
Protests Help Uphold the Moral Order
It is also important to remember two reasons why Christians must protest Satanism. First, by their actions and stated positions, Satanists reject a moral order based on an objective notion of right and wrong that is found in the Ten Commandments. They consistently support abortion, same-sex “marriage” and so many sins that destroy society and offend God.
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Secondly, Christians are practicing self-defense since it is the Satanists who are attacking what remains of Christian civilization. By protesting, Christians counter-attack and send a message to those who contemplate such actions that they will be opposed.
Protesting helps maintain the natural barrier of horror that has always stood and must continue to stand between the devil and humanity.
Protests Mean Fidelity to Our Baptismal Vow
Perhaps the most important reason to protest is that it serves as a reaffirmation of one’s baptismal vow. At Baptism, Christians are called to reject Satan and all his works. At Baptism, Christians affirm belief in God and promise to love and serve him for their lifetimes. When tempted so brutally and directly by this Satanist offensive to renege on baptismal vows, legal, peaceful, and prayerful protest is the natural expression of love and fidelity
As seen on Crisis Magazine.