How Do Satanist Movements Engage in Politics, Activism and Public Life?

Satanist movements engage in politics primarily through church-state separation litigation, public monument campaigns, and religious-exemption arguments, almost all of it driven by The Satanic Temple since 2013. The Church of Satan, by contrast, takes no political positions at all as a matter of policy. The strategy is not to promote Satanism but to test whether religious privileges granted to one faith can be denied to another.

Key Takeaways

• The Satanic Temple's core political method is the simple argument: demand the same accommodation granted to Christian groups, and let officials choose between granting it and withdrawing the original privilege.
• Its Baphomet statue, unveiled in Detroit in 2015, was created in response to a Ten Commandments monument at the Oklahoma State Capitol.
• After School Satan Clubs, launched in 2016, exist to respond to evangelical Good News Clubs operating in US public schools.
• The Church of Satan takes no political positions and instructs that members' politics are their own business.
• The Satanic Temple's Grey Faction campaigns against Satanic ritual abuse conspiracy theories and discredited recovered-memory therapy in mental health practice.
• In the UK, Royal Navy technician Chris Cranmer was permitted to register as a Satanist in 2004, the first such recognition in the British armed forces.

What is The Satanic Temple's political strategy?

The Satanic Temple's political strategy is to claim the same religious accommodations that Christian organisations receive, forcing authorities either to extend the privilege to everyone or to withdraw it entirely. The campaigns are not really about Satanism. They are about establishing that the First Amendment either applies neutrally or does not apply.

The method has a consistent shape:

1. Identify a religious privilege granted by a public body. A monument on government land, a prayer before a council meeting, a religious club in a public school, a religious exemption from a general law.
2. Apply for the identical accommodation as a Satanist organisation.
3. Wait. The authority now has three options, and all of them advance the argument.
4. Litigate or publicise the outcome. If the application is granted, religious neutrality has been demonstrated. If refused, the refusal is evidence of discrimination. If the original privilege is withdrawn to avoid the problem, the establishment issue is resolved.

The elegance of this is that losing produces almost as useful a result as winning, which is an unusual position for a campaigning organisation to be in.

The organisation's founding and structure sit in what is The Satanic Temple.

What is the Baphomet statue and why was it made?

The Baphomet statue is a bronze sculpture commissioned by The Satanic Temple, depicting Baphomet seated with two children beside it, unveiled in Detroit in July 2015. It was created specifically in response to a Ten Commandments monument installed at the Oklahoma State Capitol.

The sequence:

2012. A privately funded Ten Commandments monument was installed on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol.

2013. The Satanic Temple applied to place a monument of its own alongside it, on the principle that a public forum open to one religious display must be open to others.

2015. The statue was completed and unveiled in Detroit. In the same year, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the Ten Commandments monument violated the state constitution, and it was removed. The Satanic Temple's application became moot, which was an acceptable outcome by its own logic.

2018. The statue was displayed at a rally at the Arkansas State Capitol, where a Ten Commandments monument had been installed the previous year. Litigation over the Arkansas monument continued for years afterward.

The statue's design is worth noting. It includes two children looking up at the figure, deliberately echoing the visual language of religious statuary that features children, and it was commissioned partly because that framing is uncomfortable in a way that makes the parallel unavoidable.

Baphomet's history as a symbol is covered in who is Baphomet.

Photo by Rachael 🫧 on Unsplash

What are After School Satan Clubs?

After School Satan Clubs are extracurricular programmes run by The Satanic Temple in US public schools, launched in 2016 as a direct response to evangelical Good News Clubs. They teach science, critical thinking, and problem-solving, and contain no religious instruction.

The legal background is Good News Club v. Milford Central School, decided by the US Supreme Court in 2001, which held that a public school allowing community groups to use its facilities could not exclude a religious group on the basis of its religious viewpoint. Good News Clubs, run by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, expanded substantially on the strength of that ruling.

The Satanic Temple's position is that the same precedent applies to them. Where a school hosts a Good News Club, it cannot lawfully refuse an After School Satan Club. Several districts have reached the same conclusion after receiving legal advice, sometimes reluctantly and usually loudly.

The clubs themselves are, by all accounts, uneventful. The curriculum covers scientific reasoning and creative activities. The name does the work.

How does Satanist activism work in council chambers?

Satanist activism in local government focuses on invocations, the prayers or statements delivered at the opening of council meetings, where the argument for religious neutrality is easiest to make and hardest to answer.

The US Supreme Court's decision in Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014) permitted legislative prayer at local government meetings, provided the practice does not coerce participation or systematically exclude minority faiths. That final clause created the opening.

The Satanic Temple has requested invocation slots at councils across the United States. Outcomes have varied:

• Alaska. A Satanic invocation was delivered at the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly in 2016, prompting walkouts and a subsequent policy change that was itself successfully challenged in court.
• Arizona. Scottsdale City Council declined a Satanic invocation request. The Satanic Temple sued. A federal court ruled against the organisation in 2020, finding the refusal was not based on religious discrimination.
• Florida, Washington, and elsewhere. Various requests have been granted, refused, or resolved by councils ending invocations altogether.

The record here is genuinely mixed. The Satanic Temple loses a substantial proportion of its cases. Its own framing is that the campaign functions cumulatively rather than case by case, which is a reasonable argument and also the argument you would make if you were losing.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

What is the Grey Faction?

The Grey Faction is a Satanic Temple campaign that targets the promotion of Satanic ritual abuse conspiracy theories and discredited therapeutic practices within mental health professions. It is the organisation's least theatrical and most substantive activity.

Its focus:

Recovered-memory therapy. Techniques that purport to recover repressed memories of abuse have been extensively criticised in psychological research for generating false memories. The Grey Faction campaigns against practitioners who continue to use them.

Satanic ritual abuse claims. Some practitioners and organisations continue to assert that organised satanic abuse networks exist, despite the 1992 FBI report by Kenneth Lanning finding no corroborating evidence, and despite the collapse of the major prosecutions of the era.

Professional accountability. The campaign has filed complaints with licensing boards and professional bodies, and has attended and documented conferences where these claims are presented.

This work connects directly to the harm caused by the Satanic Panic, which produced wrongful convictions and lasting damage to families. That the campaign against its residue is run by Satanists is either ironic or entirely logical, depending on how you look at it.

Why does the Church of Satan avoid politics?

The Church of Satan takes no political positions as a matter of explicit policy, holding that political affiliation is a personal matter and that the organisation exists to advance a philosophy rather than an agenda.

Peter H. Gilmore, High Priest since 2001, has stated consistently that the Church of Satan does not endorse candidates, parties, or causes, and that its membership spans the political spectrum. The organisation's position is that Satanism is a philosophy of individual sovereignty, and that an organisation instructing its members how to vote would be contradicting itself.

This produces a sharp divergence from The Satanic Temple:

Church of Satan	The Satanic Temple
Political positions	None by policy	Extensive
Litigation	None	Central to its activity
Public campaigns	None	Continuous
Membership politics	Individual, undirected	Broadly progressive in practice
View of the other	Regards TST as activists using the label	Regards CoS as inactive

The two organisations are not friendly. The Church of Satan has publicly disputed The Satanic Temple's standing as a Satanic organisation, characterising it as a political project that adopted the branding. The Satanic Temple's response is broadly that a philosophy which never leaves the house is not much of a philosophy.

The founding organisation is covered in what is the Church of Satan, and its founder in who is Anton LaVey.

Between The Devil and the deep blue sea, Metro Article 25/10/04, The Face of the Devil

How does Satanism appear in public life in the UK?

Satanism's public profile in the UK is considerably lower than in the United States, largely because the constitutional argument that drives American Satanist activism does not exist here in the same form. The UK has an established church, which makes the church-state separation case structurally different.

Notable UK developments:

Royal Navy recognition, 2004. Chris Cranmer, a technician serving on HMS Cumberland, was permitted to register as a Satanist and to practise, making him the first officially recognised Satanist in the British armed forces. The decision attracted substantial press attention and objection from religious groups, and it held.

Census recognition. Satanism appears in UK census write-in responses under "other religion", though the numbers are small and the categorisation inconsistent between census rounds.

Prison and hospital chaplaincy. Provision for minority faiths including Satanism is handled case by case rather than through any general policy.

Satanic Temple UK. A chapter has operated in the UK, engaging mainly in community activity and public education rather than litigation, for the straightforward reason that there is much less to litigate.

The broader question of legal standing is covered in is Satanism a real religion.

How is Satanism used as a political accusation?

Satanism functions far more often as a political accusation than as a political movement, and the accusation has been directed at opponents for centuries with no relationship to actual Satanist organisations.

The modern form is conspiracist. Claims that political and cultural elites are engaged in satanic practice have circulated persistently, most visibly through Pizzagate in 2016 and the wider QAnon phenomenon from 2017 onward. These theories allege organised satanic abuse by named public figures. They are not supported by evidence, and they reproduce the structure of the 1980s Satanic Panic almost exactly, with social media replacing daytime television as the transmission mechanism.

The effect on actual Satanists is a nuisance rather than a threat, though not always. Being a member of a small religious minority that a substantial number of people believe to be a criminal conspiracy is an uncomfortable position, and Satanist organisations have reported harassment, vandalism, and threats.

There is also a genuinely extremist fringe that must be distinguished from this. The Order of Nine Angles, a decentralised network associated with neo-Nazi ideology, has been linked to terrorism prosecutions in the UK and elsewhere. Both the Church of Satan and The Satanic Temple reject it explicitly. It is not part of the political activity described above, and treating it as representative is the error the conspiracy theories depend on.

What has Satanist activism actually achieved?

Satanist activism has achieved a modest number of direct legal wins, a larger number of indirect outcomes where authorities withdrew privileges rather than extend them, and a substantial shift in public visibility. Assessing it purely on court records understates it; assessing it purely on publicity overstates it.

Direct wins. Several invocation and monument disputes resolved in The Satanic Temple's favour. Recognition as a church by the US Internal Revenue Service in 2019 was significant in itself.

Indirect outcomes. Multiple councils have ended invocation practices altogether rather than host a Satanic one. Several school districts have reconsidered outside-group access policies. From a church-state separation perspective, these count.

Losses. A significant proportion of the litigation has failed, including The Satanic Temple v. City of Scottsdale in 2020 and several reproductive-rights challenges. Courts have frequently found against the organisation on standing or on the sincerity of the religious claim.

Visibility. Satanism is now discussed in mainstream US media as a legal actor rather than only as a moral panic. That is a real change from the 1990s, and it is probably the most durable achievement.

FAQ

Is The Satanic Temple a real religion or a political stunt? Both descriptions have been applied, and the organisation's answer is that the distinction is false. It holds sincere non-theistic beliefs set out in its Seven Tenets, was granted church status by the US Internal Revenue Service in 2019, and ordains ministers. It also uses that standing strategically for political ends. Many religious organisations do the same thing; the difference is that this one is explicit about it.

Does the Church of Satan campaign on anything? No. The Church of Satan takes no political positions and runs no campaigns, on the stated grounds that Satanism is a philosophy of individual sovereignty and that telling members what to think politically would contradict it. Individual members hold and act on whatever views they hold. The organisation does not aggregate them.

Did The Satanic Temple actually put a statue in a state capitol? No, though it came close twice. The Baphomet statue was unveiled in Detroit in 2015 and has been displayed at rallies, including at the Arkansas State Capitol in 2018, but it has never been permanently installed on government property. The Oklahoma application became moot when that state's Ten Commandments monument was ruled unconstitutional and removed.

Are After School Satan Clubs actually teaching Satanism? No. The programme covers science, critical thinking, puzzles, and creative activities, and contains no religious instruction. Its purpose is to provide a counterpart to evangelical Good News Clubs operating in the same schools under the same access rules. The name is doing deliberate work, which The Satanic Temple has never pretended otherwise.

Has a Satanist ever held public office? No openly Satanist person is known to have held significant elected office. Satanist organisations do not run candidates. The Satanic Temple's political engagement operates through litigation and public campaigning rather than electoral politics, and the Church of Satan does not engage at all.

Is Satanism recognised in the British military? Yes, since 2004, when Royal Navy technician Chris Cranmer was permitted to register as a Satanist while serving aboard HMS Cumberland. The decision was the first of its kind in the British armed forces and drew objections from religious organisations at the time. Recognition is handled through the general provision for minority faiths rather than any Satanism-specific policy.

Why do conspiracy theories keep accusing politicians of Satanism? Because the accusation is old, flexible, and requires no evidence. Alleging that opponents serve a malevolent supernatural power has been a feature of political rhetoric for centuries. The modern versions, including Pizzagate and QAnon, reproduce the structure of the 1980s Satanic Panic closely. Neither has any connection to organised Satanist groups, which are small, publicly listed, and mostly occupied with local government paperwork.

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