Just in time for Christmas, a spate of Satanic idols is being erected in and around state capitols. The latest of these, a Saturnalian Baphomet creature seemingly woven of twigs and placed on the lawn outside the capitol building in Ann Arbor, made headlines when Michigan Democrat staffer Samantha Skorka posed with the idol for a social media post. She wrote: “In the name of Satan, I claim the sexy satanic baphomet goat altar at OUR Michigan Capitol. Amen.” Skorka reportedly deleted the post.
The Satanic Temple of Michigan put up a Satan statue in front of the Michigan Capitol.
Michigan Democrat staffer Samantha Skorka @skorkasammi posed with it and praised it calling it “s*xy” before quickly deleting her tweet. The internet is forever!
.@MIHouseDems support Satan! pic.twitter.com/xiTN0hD1eu
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 21, 2023
Earlier this month, the Satanic Temple of Iowa set up a demonic shrine inside the state’s capitol building. The idol consisted of a silver ram’s head atop a red-cloaked mannequin, surrounded by candles and adorned with a pentagram wreath. While Republican legislators deliberated over whether this was appropriate, a former military officer and avowed Christian named Michael Cassidy tore the atrocity down and beheaded it, dumping the head in a trash can and earning a fourth-degree charge for criminal mischief.
Jon Dunwell, Iowa state representative and Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor, said: “I certainly find a display from the Satanic Temple objectionable. It stands in direct opposition to my faith and would be classified as evil.” But he explained that he could not and would not object to the demonic display on legal grounds, adding, “I don’t want the state evaluating and making determinations about religions.” (READ MORE: Shane Dawson and Ryland Adams’ Use of Surrogacy Showcases the Practice’s Grotesqueness)
In contrast, Cassidy explained in comments to the Sentinel: “I saw this blasphemous statue and was outraged. My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree.” He added that “[a]nti-Christian values have steadily been mainstreamed more and more in recent decades, and Christians have largely acted like the proverbial frog in the boiling pot of water.”
The difference between Dunwell’s defense of the Satanic idol and Cassidy’s destruction of it is a sort of microcosm for a growing divide in the conservative movement. One the one hand, there is an old-guard sect that still holds to the increasingly unviable libertarian tenet of consent-based morality. This set, of which Dunwell would be a representative, is willing to declare something “evil” in his own personal opinion but wouldn’t dare ask his government to lift a finger against that evil. This line of thinking, if carried to its natural conclusion, results in the pathetic “I personally think abortion is evil, but it’s a choice everyone has to make for themselves” trope.
On the other hand, there exists a burgeoning class of young, objective-minded conservatives who are outraged by the old guard’s failure to actually conserve anything. Disdainful of the prior generations’ continual ceding of every facet and aspect of American culture to Marxists, Satanists, and the LGBT stormtroopers, this new generation of conservatives declares that if America is to be conserved, it must be fought for. Notably, this new class of conservatives recognizes that morality is objective, not a malleable abstraction to be reshaped by whatever political party or ideological fad is dominant that year.
Christians, too, have been divided by the question of how to respond to such things as the fad of Satanic idols. There is an argument to be made that Cassidy broke the law of the land in destroying the demonic effigy, but a stronger argument is that God’s laws are supreme over the laws of man. The entire history of Christianity bears witness to this fact, particularly in the lengthy catalog of martyrs revered and lionized by Christians of almost every denomination. Saints Peter and Paul were executed by Rome for choosing their faith instead of the emperor’s laws. Saint Maximilian Kolbe and Protestant pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer were executed by the Nazis for choosing Christ over Adolf Hitler. Even today, Christians are martyred in China, India, and across Africa because they refuse to place a regime before God. (RELATED: Naming Names: The World’s Worst Religious Persecutors)
Evil is pervading and corrupting the West — from pornography and 1,000 different stripes of sexual deviancy to contraception and the horrors of the abortion chamber. Consent-based libertarian ethics will not stem the tide. Moral relativism is what has led to the domination of America by perverse, radical agendas; clinging to that methodology will only result in the death of the nation’s soul. The quaint idea of saying, “I have my morality, which is different than yours, so let’s create a neutral space so that ne’er the twain shall meet,” has been tried and has failed. It has failed because the leftist ideology takes no quarter. If a vacuum is created, leftism will fill it and still maintain an appetite for expansion.
Conservatives and, perhaps more to the point, Christians face a choice: whether to reclaim civilization and base its laws on objective, absolute moral good or to kid themselves that they’re making a shrewd compromise while everything they hold dear is suppressed, shattered, and stripped away. Liberty is a fine thing, but it’s not something the ideologies antithetical to the West do or will respect. They will use it to seek and gain ascendancy and then pry it from the cold, dead fingers of the fools they conquer.
Unless someone stands up against them.