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this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
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I would encourage you to broaden your research beyond Wikipedia. While it is a great jumping off point for many things, it is not a credible source in any academic or judicial sense. Lucien Greaves has some some very on-point statements in the court cases he's been involved in detailing how TST is a genuine religion.
I think you're getting too hung up on your idea that it is "centered around stereotypes that offend Christians," which it is not. There is deliberately no standard for how to practice, and you will find many that identify as Satanist have had past experiences with Wicca, Paganism, and other non-theistic/mono-theistic religions. They bring those past experiences to their personal practices and rituals, which is hardly appropriating or as you said, "cringe."
I don't see why you keep trying to compare the two, they are entirely different religions. In this context then would you say Buddhists are appropriating the image of the Buddha? They do not see him as their "god," yet they use his image and name whenever they refer to themselves.
It seems like you both basically agree and are just arguing at each other without trying to understand each other.
Church of Satan = Worships a concept of Satan, pretty much invented by "Anton LaVey" to get laid and get paid; by all accounts it worked. He wanted it to be the inverse of Christianity. Largely based on the idealogies of Nietzsche, Rand, and social darwinism with many of the actual rituals inspired by LaVeys love of H.P. Lovecraft.
The Satanic Temple = secular activist group that uses satanic imagery to agitate for civil rights/secularism/separation of church and state/etc. They refer to the literary concept of Satan as opposed to the literal Fallen Angel Lucifer.
Yup that's exactly it, everything I've said about the TST here is what I've read from their own "About Us" page so it's funny to me that I'm getting debate-bro'd and downvoted for it. Someone even called it a "pretend religion" to me which means it wouldn't even be able to challenge these discrimination laws in court. Calling someone's religion "pretend" would actually be discrimination.
A lot of western Buddhism is Buddhist in the same way Satanic Temple is Satanist. IE it's contingent and determined by the hegemonic cultural ideologies that are manufacturing it in to an identity available for consumption in an individualist capitalist context. Appropriated and removed from the context it originated and defined itself within.
It's similar with certain Pagan groups, because Paganism was absorbed into Christendom, so what's happening is people are manufacturing this modern notion of what Paganism was, completely removed from the conditions it existed in. And as you say there's no standard, which is entirely the point I'm making, it's up to the individual to construct their identity around it and decide "what it means for me." That's entirely different than the mode of traditional identity which was fulfilled by your role in the society, handed to you and determined. Now it's a modern notion of authentic identity where you "discover me" and decide what that is. That's why these pseudo-religious roles people claim cannot be genuine, the time and context they existed in are gone, and it's now a form of packaging ideals that already exist in our culture in to a mode of commodification.
The tenants of the Satanic Temple are basically the hegemony of our modern culture, individual liberty etc. Satan as historically depicted provides the iconography, used in an ironic metaphorical sense, appropriated from the context from which it originated, commodified and consumed. That's why I use the term hyperreal to describe it, because it's a notion of something reflected back on itself through modes of representation.