A group calling itself the Satanic Temple of Iowa has placed a Satanic altar on the first floor of the Iowa State Capitol.
The display features a mannequin or mock-up of the goat-god, Baphomet, which is associated with Satan-worship. The head is covered with a mirror-like silver material and the body is covered with a red robe and red decorative material resembling roses. In the middle of the chest is the upside-down five-pointed star, another symbol of Baphomet and of Satan worship.
On the floor near the idol are candles and, on mock tables of stone, are what the Satanic Temple says are its “seven fundamental tenets,” including “the freedom to offend.”
It’s one of several displays that have been erected in the capitol building to celebrate the holidays—including a large Christmas Tree and a creche, the traditional nativity scene. The Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers have put up a poster saying “joy to the world, reason has come.” The Freedom From Religion Foundation has put up a poster with Franklin, Jefferson and Washington viewing the Bill of Rights, saying, “At this season of the winter solstice, join us in honoring the Bill of Rights, adopted December 15, 1791, which reminds us there can be no freedom of religion without the freedom to dissent. Keep religion and government separate!”
The Baphomet display has sparked outrage, prompted public prayer in the Iowa capitol building—including a service attended by Governor Kim Reynolds—and has divided state Republicans, with at least one state legislator calling for its removal and others defending its presence as a form of free speech.
The state’s Department of Administrative Services approves all of the holiday displays, and approved the Baphomet display. While the Department offers guidelines, it does not “discriminate on the basis of religion,” said state Rep. Jon Dunwell, a Republican and a pastor.
The Iowa Legislature’s current policy on the displays is to “either allow all displays or none,” Dunwell said, and the Department of Administrative Services told local media that the Satanic Temple had applied for and met all the requirements for a display.
Iowa Governor Kim Reyonlds, a Republican, has not called for the removal of the display. She stated,
In a free society, the best response to objectionable speech is more speech, and I encourage all those of faith to join me today in praying over the Capitol and recognizing the nativity scene that will be on display – the true reasons for the season.”
She added that, personally, she found the Satanic Temple’s display “absolutely objectionable.” Iowa Republican lawmaker Brad Sherman disagreed, writing,
“It is a tortured and twisted interpretation of law that affords Satan, who is universally understood to be the enemy of God, religious expression equal to God in an institution of government that depends on God for continued blessings.”
As we have pointed out before, the atheistic, Leftist agitators behind the “Satanic Temple of Iowa” are not actual Satan worshipers. On its website, the Satanic Temple says it does not worship nor believe in Satan or the supernatural, but rather advocates for freedom of religion and believes that religion should be “divorced from superstition.”
In other words, these are just anti-Christian agitators, trolling Christians for fun, knowing that Christians are effectively a disempowered minority in today’s America, where the FBI, the most lavishly funded and heavily armed paramilitary organization in human history, is deployed against anti-abortion Christians and parents who don’t want the government schools convincing their children to have their sex organs cut off. Considering the real persecution of Christians in America today, trolling the Iowa farmers with a Baphomet statue in their capitol building is one of the milder insults Christians must put up with.
A problem with this kind of trollery is that Satan is very real: “Still another subtle and mischievous error is the fast-spreading belief that Satan has no existence as a personal being; that the name is used in Scripture merely to represent men's evil thoughts and desires.” Great Controversy, p. 524.3.