\u201cIs it science fiction or a cult?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first and most prominent of corporations dedicated to The Satanic Temple seems to clearly be named as a reference to something<\/em>, but is it a reference to the fictional, secular utopianism of \u201cUnited Federation of Planets<\/a>\u201d in Star Trek? Or is it a reference to \u201cUnited Federation of Churches<\/a>\u201d, one of the front companies of Sun Myung Moon\u2019s very real cult-turned-enduring-mass movement the Unification Church (i.e. \u201cMoonies\u201d)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are the sort of questions that seem terribly important when you\u2019ve been trying to untangle The Satanic Temple for months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three episodes in and we\u2019re now finally getting to what most people are thinking of when they refer to TST; that is, United Federation of Churches, LLC d\/b\/a \u201cThe Satanic Temple\u201d<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Probably. Maybe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n See, \u201cThe Satanic Temple\u201d started as a project connected with co-owner Cevin Soling\u2019s existing corporation Spectacle Films Inc., as we detailed in the previous episode<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than a year passes between TST\u2019s first public event in Florida and for-profit company United Federation of Churches LLC<\/a> incorporating in Massachusetts in February 2014, even though TST would file retroactive intellectual property claims under their limited liability corporation stretching back to Jan. 1, 2013. So figuring out when \u201cThe Satanic Temple\u201d came to exist as it\u2019s understood today is a bit tricky, partially overlapping with the Spectacle Films-project era but evidently preceding even that.<\/p>\n\n\n In fact, per Joseph Laycock\u2019s book<\/a>, Soling\u2019s germ of an idea for TST began all the way back in 2001 in response to George W. Bush\u2019s Faith-Based Community Initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t allow a Satanic organization to take advantage of this,\u201d Laycock quotes Soling\u2019s pseudonym \u201cMalcolm Jarry\u201d thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By 2007, during an international flight with Soling\u2019s friend and fellow filmmaker David Guinan, Soling was considering the reaction to someone demanding federal funds for \u201ca Satanic soup kitchen,\u201d Guinan told Laycock. (By the way, this would track with the two of them flying to the island of Tanna in the South Pacific for their Spectacle Films documentary project John Frum, He Will Come<\/em><\/a> a.k.a. Mr. Cevin and the Cargo Cult<\/em><\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Laycock relates that Soling and Doug Misicko, at that point going by public pseudonym \u201cDoug Mesner\u201d, met sometime in 2012 at a Harvard faculty party club where Soling was telling a woman about how much Soling hates public schools<\/a> until she left Soling and Misicko together, with the two hitting it off so much they became \u201cfriends and briefly roommates\u201d, as Laycock relates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Laycock describes \u201cthe birth certificate of TST\u201d to be an essay titled \u201cEducational Mission: A Report and Plan of Action\u201d aimed at then Florida Gov. Rick Scott, which Soling completed Dec. 12, 2012. We have only one line of this proto-TST manifesto, again via Laycock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Action is based on the theory that when the rules that are used to subjugate a population are applied to the people who create and enforce those rules, constructive changes occur.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n If true, this would explain so much of what has happened\u200a\u2014\u200aand failed to happen\u200a\u2014\u200ain nearly a decade of TST activity since. But there\u2019s some reason to doubt this official narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first public evidence of TST is someone creating a Facebook page<\/a> a few weeks later; a Twitter account<\/a> the same month (initially as \u201c@SatanicPsalms<\/a>\u201d, since re-named \u201c@satanic_temple_\u201d). The same day there is a since-deleted Facebook post from the \u201cLucien Greaves\u201d Facebook profile also pushed to Twitter: Let the great Satanic \u201ccoming out\u201d begin!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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