BY MELISSA BARNHART , CP REPORTER
January 7, 2014
The New York-based Satanic Temple on Monday submitted its designs for a monument that it aims to have placed at the Oklahoma Capitol next to the Ten Commandments. The sculpture will feature a 7-foot-tall goat-headed creature, Baphomet, as Satan, which will be flanked by two adoring children – one boy and one girl – smiling as they look up to the creature that will be large enough so that tourists can sit in its lap.
Lucien Greaves, the spokesman for New York’s Satanic Temple, told the Christian Post on Tuesday that the organization wanted to include children in the sculpture because they are “very concerned for children’s rights and child welfare.”
“We are looking to take up the fight against corporal punishment in schools, which is still allowed in 19 states, sometimes results in children’s admission into hospital emergency rooms, and has no beneficial effect, according to any credible empirical research. We hope that today’s children can grow up in enriching environments that cultivate their curiosity, divorced from the damaging and divisive demonologies of the past,” Greaves asserted.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the Satanic Temple had already raised $19,834 of its $20,000 goal to fund the process of sculpting their monument to Satan.
Last month, CP reported that the organization sent a letter to Oklahoma officials expressing its interest in erecting the sculpture that proposes to be a “homage to the historic/literary Satan.”
In the letter, Greaves also accuses Republican state Rep. Mike Ritze of “helping a satanic agenda grow more than any of us possibly could,” because he has privately funded the Ten Commandments display that sits outside the state’s capitol. The Ten Commandments monument was also approved by the Oklahoma legislature in 2009.
Trait Thompson, chair for the State Capitol Preservation Commission, told CP that any proposed artwork “must be evaluated by the architecture and grounds committee.” He added that the Decalogue display did not go through the typical process for a capitol monument.
“In the case of the Ten Commandments monument, the legislature passed a bill in 2009 authorizing the monument to be placed, so it was not approved through our typical process. The CPC’s only role was to select a location for the monument,” Thompson said.
Even though the satanist group is based in New York, they are not petitioning to build a similar sculpture in that state, because as Greaves asserts, the organization is working on behalf of its members who reside in Oklahoma.
“To be clear, it was Oklahomans who petitioned us for this monument, and we filed on their behalf. We have membership in Oklahoma City, and we represent a segment of the population there. Further, we know of no similar circumstances in New York where a religious monument sits on public grounds.”
Greaves continued: “Where the separation of church and state is respected, the Satanic Temple will never move to revise the laws to allow a monument of theirs to stand on its own. Our monument is explicitly meant to complement and contrast the Ten Commandments monument. While it may be best if religious monuments are left off of state property, when the situation arises that the state breaks down the separation of church and state, it is best that a multiplicity of religious voices are represented, rather than allowing one group to apparently co-opt the power and authority of the capitol.”
In a NewsOK report Republican state Rep. Don Armes affirmed his belief that a satanic sculpture isn’t going to be erected at the state’s capitol, a location some call the buckle of the “Bible Belt.”
“I think you’ve got to remember where you are. This is Oklahoma, the middle of the heartland,” Armes asserted. “I think we need to be tolerant of people who think different than us, but this is Oklahoma, and that’s not going to fly here.”
From the Author: The erection of a monument such as this one reminds me of just how evil people in our nation have become. All it took was for a monument of the Ten Commandments to be erected for Satan’s body of believers to replicate a monument of their own in competition.What a disgrace for Oklahoma but it hasn’t been approved yet so we must pray that it won’t be.
When I saw the children placed within the monument along side the beastly 7-foot-tall goat headed creature by the name Baphomet it shocked me beyond belief.
Just as it was in the beginning when Lucifer considered himself to be equal with G-d, it has been a continual battle for 1st place ever since. The only way to deal with the erection of the Ten Commandments, was to erect his own monument next to theirs. But to deceive little children into thinking that he cares for them and this is what they are doing. Satan and his followers have been deceiving mankind from the beginning of time and today he is concentrating heavily on our young people more than ever. The cell phone, I-pads,TV, Drugs, the Internet and now Marijuana all are tools in which he is manipulating his young prey. We’re losing ground with our youth and losing it quickly.
Stories like this will only increase as we get closer to Jesus’ return. Thank G-d He is coming back to get His own who are ground in the TRUTH of His WORD.
We are on the path to a spiritual awakening and it may appear that we are losing the battle for salvation but if you look around, you will see that Christians are moving victoriously on G-d’s behalf. Think not that it is over for us Christians – rather,this is only beginning.
Exodus 20:1-15 ESV
And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me