The Same Spring the IRS Called Them a Church

Hail Satan? reached theaters on April 19, 2019, days after an event its own subject had been working toward for years. On April 25, 2019, The Satanic Temple announced that the Internal Revenue Service had granted it recognition as a church, a tax exempt religious designation carrying more legal weight than the general nonprofit status it had held before. It was the first organization identifying itself as Satanist ever to receive that classification from the federal government.

The recognition mattered less for taxes than for standing. A federally recognized church has an easier legal claim to the same access other religious organizations get to public spaces, school programs and after school clubs, and to religious exemption arguments in court, all grounds The Satanic Temple had already been contesting case by case around the country. Co-founder Lucien Greaves, interviewed around the film's release, framed the designation as confirmation of an argument the group had been making publicly since its founding: that its combination of activism, ritual and a shared set of Seven Tenets amounted to a genuine religious practice rather than a prank aimed at Christianity, whatever its name suggested to people who had not looked closely. The Satanic Temple does not hold Satan to exist or worship him; its members describe him as a literary figure representing rebellion against arbitrary authority.