Non-theistic activist Satanism

The Satanic Temple affirms a non-theistic, activist Satanism centred on reason, compassion, and social engagement. It does not believe in a literal Satan or the supernatural but adopts the Satanic figure of the rebel as a symbol of defiance against tyranny and of the pursuit of justice. Much of its public life takes the form of campaigns for the separation of religion and government, religious pluralism, and bodily autonomy, often through pointed legal actions that test the equal treatment of belief. It presents Satanism as a lived ethical and civic stance rather than a set of supernatural claims.

The Satanic Temple was founded in 2013 by Lucien Greaves (a pseudonym for Douglas Mesner) and Malcolm Jarry, based in Salem, Massachusetts. Its first major public action was a mock rally in support of Florida governor Rick Scott after he signed legislation permitting student-led prayer at school events, staged to highlight that such a law would in principle open public schools to Satanic invocations on the same terms as Christian ones. It gained wider national attention through a campaign, beginning in 2014, to install a statue of Baphomet on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol after a Ten Commandments monument had been placed there, a campaign that became a widely covered test case for religious equal-access arguments even though the statue itself was ultimately not installed at the Capitol.

This activist orientation distinguishes The Satanic Temple both from the individualist Church of Satan and from theistic Satanist groups. Founded in 2013, the Temple has gained recognition as a religious organisation while grounding its identity in reason and the defence of civil liberties. Its beliefs are codified in a set of Fundamental Tenets that emphasise empathy, justice, and the primacy of conscience. The affirmation is described here as the Temple presents itself: a non-theistic religion using Satanic symbolism in the service of secular and humanistic values.

Much of the Temple's activism since the 2010s has focused on reproductive rights, arguing that laws restricting abortion access violate its members' sincerely held religious belief in the inviolability of one's own body, the Third Tenet, and its right to have that belief accommodated on the same legal terms courts have extended to other religious objectors; it has pursued this argument in lawsuits in several states, with mixed results, particularly intensifying after the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs v.

Jackson Women's Health Organization decision ended the federal constitutional right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade. The Temple's use of litigation as a primary form of religious practice is itself part of what makes its self-description as non-theistic and activist rather than devotional accurate to how it actually operates.