Schools receive request for after-school 'Satan Club'

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- After-school religious clubs appear to be the next venture of a national group that sought to install a statue of Satan outside two state capitols to protest Christian monuments on public grounds.

The Satanic Temple contacted nine public school districts across the country this week, seeking to start after-school Satan programs.

In all but one district, religious clubs are operated by the Child Evangelism Fellowship's Good News Clubs, in which students can study the Bible and pray, temple co-founder Lucien Greaves said.

Several districts contacted by The Associated Press said they were reviewing the group's request and noted their facilities were available to community groups.

Mat Staver, founder of a Christian legal-aid group that has represented the Child Evangelism Fellowship, said Greaves' organization was illegitimate and an "atheist group masquerading" as religious.

Greaves described Satanism as an atheist philosophy whose believers "feel it provides everything a religion provides to be legitimized as such."

The Satanic Temple, which is based in Salem, Massachusetts, and has chapters in several states, said it wants to counter well-funded fundamentalist Christian organizations it believes are eroding the separation of church and state in public schools.

Greaves said his group could pose tough legal fights if its requests are denied.