A holiday diorama created by the Satanic Temple has been on display in the state Capitol building's rotunda for several hours now, and, probably to the surprise of the end-days set, the sky has yet to open up with fiery rain or a locust swarm.
Created by two members of the group who live in Tallahassee, the display is one of several to go up at the site that represent a religious or philosophical point of view. There's also a menorah, a Festivus pole made of empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cans, and a tribute to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Last week a Christian Nativity was on display. That was taken down Monday due to seven-day limits imposed to make time for all of the displays, and this week a poster depicting the Nativity scene went up.
"There are multiple holidays for multiple religions, and of multiple origins, celebrated at this time of year," said Lucien Greaves, the Satanic Temple's co-founder, in an email. "No one viewpoint holds a monopoly on the celebratory spirit of the season, and we hope that people can put their differences aside and enjoy this break from normal activities in whatever way they see fit."
If it hadn't been for the Nativity scene, the other groups might not have thought to follow suit, said John Porgal, one of the Tallahassee residents who created the diorama.
"If the Nativity scene never came in here in the first place we would never had done this," Porgal, who is also a member of the American Atheists of Tallahassee, told the News Service of Florida. "We don't want to be insulting. We just want our rights, the separation of church and states or equal rights."
The Satanic Temple has nothing to do with actual devil worship or human sacrifice or any of the other pop culture tropes typically associated with Satanism. It's really about the promotion of independent thought and the questioning of established values.
But to Greaves, what the New York-based group is about really shouldn't matter when it comes to religious displays in government buildings.
"The government must remain neutral in the question of religion," he wrote. "Even if we were everything that our most hysterical detractors hate and fear, it doesn't matter. We will be there. It simply isn't the place of the government to take it upon themselves to judge which forms of religious expression are or are not legitimate."
He said what's depicted in the display — an angel descending into hellfire — is less about the endorsement of a given deity than it is about "the pursuit of truth, justice, and knowledge, and the rejection of any and all tyranny, even at the price of great self-sacrifice and/or ostracism."
The group had tried to set the display up last year, but the state Department of Management Services rejected it on the grounds that it was "grossly offensive." Obviously, things were different this time around.
Why?
"This year, we arrived with a team of lawyers from Americans United for the Separation of Church & State," Greaves said.
As one might expect, some people aren't too thrilled about the group's presence.
"They're here to shut down Christianity," Pam Olsen, on behalf of the Florida Prayer Network and the International House of Prayer told the News Service of Florida. "They're fighting for the separation of church and state. That's what their whole premise is. They're here to fight the display of Christ and Christmas. Whether we have a display here or not, guess what, Christ is in Christmas."
This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2014.