Satanist Delivers Invocation at Texas City Council Meeting, Sparking Protests
“We will be there to pray…that they find God. The future of our community and of our nation depends on it.”
A city council meeting in Texas was recently the site of lively protest after a Satanist was slated to deliver the opening invocation.
About 100 people of various Christian denominations and faiths showed up to the San Marcos City Council meeting to object to the reading from Lanzifer Eligos Longinus, a representative of the Satanic Temple, as the San Antonio Express-News reported.
The Express-News reported that while Longinus’ invocation was read without interruption, a few protesters responded when the words were closed with “Hail Satan!”
Outside, protesters chanted, prayed, and held signs objecting to the Satanic reading.
“I find it very ironic because I'm all about religious freedom, even their religious freedom,” Longinus told the newspaper. “That's why I encourage people of other religious minorities to do the same thing that I've done today, so that way they can express their voice.”
So too did some of the Christians on the ground believe Longinus had a right to be there.
“We do not plan to protest the satanic invocation itself,” Tristen Cleve of the Citizens Defending Freedom told Todd Starnes ahead of the council meeting. “Just like all Americans, satanists have a right to speak and worship as they choose, though we certainly disagree with them.”
He added that “as a group that harbors traditional morals and Christian values, we will be there to pray that God’s presence is present and that we are asking for healing for this town and that God’s spirit be with the council members. And with the satanists that are here to pray to their deity that they find God. The future of our community and of our nation depends on it.”
The Satanic Temple is a thinly veiled activist group that ultimately seeks to push the boundaries of publicly recognized religion to extend to Satanists as well.
They have filed lawsuits seeking to protect their “right” to abortion “rituals,” worked to construct Baphomet statues on public property, and organized after-school “Satan clubs” for public school students, cheekily arguing that if Christians have a right to such institutions in American public life, so ought every other religion including symbolic and actual worship of Satan.