Members of the Satanic Temple, a religious organization which is more of an advocacy group for secular government than a religious faith, has been in a long-standing battle to install a statue of Baphomet in Oklahoma next to a Ten Commandments monument. After being denied by the state government, they found a location in an industrial zone in Detroit for their statue.
The Ten Commandments monument is a controversial sculpture on the Oklahoma State Capitol grounds. It was ruled unconstitutional by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, because of a ban on using state property for religious purposes in the Oklahoma State Constitution. The Satanic Temple tried to have a 9 foot tall statue of Baphomet installed in protest, but were denied. The Governor of Oklahoma has refused to remove the Ten Commandments statue while she appeals the decision.
The Satanic Temple does not believe in a literal Satan; instead, followers speak of a literary entity that stands for reason and freedom. From a Time article about the installation:
Most vitally, though, the group does not “promote a belief in a personal Satan.” By their logic, Satan is an abstraction, or, as Nancy Kaffer wrote for The Daily Beast last year, “a literary figure, not a deity — he stands for rationality, for skepticism, for speaking truth to power, even at great personal cost.”
The Satanic Temple lost their bid to place their statue on the Oklahoma State Capitol, although the Ten Commandments still stands; do you think it’s only a matter of time before the Commandments monument is removed?
What do you think about the Satanic Temple’s protest methods?