After-School Satan club in Tacoma shuts down due to lack of funding

The Satanic Temple in Seattle has decided to shut down an after-school program in a public school in Tacoma, Washington due to lack of funding and volunteers.

The After-School Satan club had been offered to children from all elementary grade levels at Point Defiance Elementary School during the second half of last school year, but the Temple said that it does not have the resources to continue the program this year.

"It was a matter of funding, and also volunteers who couldn't take the time out of work because it's right in the middle of the work day, so we didn't have enough volunteers," said Temple leader Lilith Starr, according to The Chronicle.

The Temple has been attempting to launch similar programs in schools where Christian Good News Clubs were already meeting. The Christian program, which makes a presentation of the gospel to children, is sponsored by Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), which won a landmark 2001 case in the U.S. Supreme Court for equal access to school facilities. The Temple then claimed the same rights to use school facilities for its program.

Starr did not disclose the number of children attending the After-School Satan Club, but she said it had been well-attended.

In November, a group of Point Defiance parents asked the Tacoma School Board to ban the club. But district officials decided to allow the Temple to launch the program, citing the Supreme Court ruling that compels public schools that open their facilities for after-school rental to make the facilities available to all kinds of groups.

Liberty Counsel, which represents CEF, claimed that the club ceased meeting soon after the teachers from the Temple conducted the first session in December 2016, noting that only one child signed up for the Temple's program.

Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, noted that there are less about Satanism and more about efforts to force schools to shut down the Good News Clubs.

"As we predicted, the so-called Satanist club fizzled," Staver said. "These clubs have never been successful and are doomed to fail. The atheists use scare tactics to oppose the Good News Clubs, but we are neither fooled nor intimidated. The so-called Satanist Temple and its after-school club had nothing good to offer students, so it was only a matter of time before it fizzled out," he added.

The Temple stated on its website that it is not trying to convert children to Satanism, and it only wants to provide alternative programs for students at schools where Good News Clubs are offered.

Starr said that the Temple is making the After-School Satan curriculum available to volunteers who want to run clubs in schools in their communities, with the hope that someone would step up to get the program started again in Tacoma.