Lisa Davis lied about an After School Satan Club, then hosted a "prayer walk" for the community

A California school board member is being rightfully criticized for equating a proposed After School Satan Club with Nazis and the KKK, proving that she knows absolutely nothing about what the Satanic club stands for or wants to do.

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Readers of this site are well aware by now of how these ASS Clubs work. They do not promote Satan, Satanic beliefs, Satanism, or anything else like it. The Satanic Temple, which sponsors these groups, doesn’t even believe in a literal Satan. They aren’t interested in indoctrination. Rather, the Satanists “focus on free inquiry and rationalism, the scientific basis for which we know what we know about the world around us.” It’s like a science club with a devilish twist.

Importantly, The Satanic Temple doesn’t start these groups from scratch; they only come about in response to (Christian) Good News Clubs.

That’s what’s happening in the Capistrano Unified School District in California. Because there’s a Good News Club at Truman Benedict Elementary School, an After School Satan Club recently launched there, too. (The first meeting was on February 12.)

But when the group announced that it would launch a club there, one member of the district’s Board of Trustees couldn’t handle it.

On January 17, Lisa Davis spent several minutes during a board meeting complaining about the existence of the ASS Club, comparing their existence to that of supposed “Nazi clubs,” “Hitler clubs,” and “KKK clubs.” Her monologue went on for a while—you can hear it beginning at the 2:05:47 mark here—but I clipped the relevant portions in the video below:

Ironically, she opened her remarks by celebrating “National Religious Freedom Day.”

Happy 2024. I'm so excited for what this year, this new year, has to offer our students here in Capistrano Unified. Exciting things are happening here and I look forward to what lies ahead for us in the 2024 year. Yesterday was our National Religious Freedom Day. National Religious Freedom Day marks the anniversary of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, drafted in 1777 by Thomas Jefferson.

It was a pivotal moment in our nation’s history, as that visionary document laid the foundation for the protection of religious liberties enshrined in our Constitution…

…

We don't have the authority to do whatever we want as a board. Our clubs are also not set up carte blanc. We do not allow 6-year-olds to run and lead a club. We would not approve Proud Boys clubs, bondage clubs, guns and shooting clubs, ANTIFA clubs, Nazi clubs, Hitler clubs, KKK clubs, black magic clubs, Ouija board clubs, club, safe sex clubs, or would we?

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I have been informed that we have a request by the After School Satan Club that they would like to open up a club in one of our—one of my—elementary schools in San Clemente because that school also has a Good News, or a Christian, club.

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Under state law, we are required to have a policy to educate and everything surrounding education. However, I'm not exactly sure how a Satanic club fits into all this. Here's why: First of all, can we look at a policy that simply states a club's title needs to be descriptive to the activity of the club?

Seems like a simple solution. While we can be pluralistic about faith and agree to disagree on doctrinal matters, I would think that the district would not allow the formation of a KKK or a Nazi club under a sense of propriety that neither of them reflect our community values. It would not matter in the least if we were offering courses—if they were offering courses in self worth, art, or public speaking. I would think that the board would, rightly so, reject their applications out of hand.

Honestly, in my view, Nazis and KKKs are terrible, but Satanists are the worst and absolutely contrary to everything I believe and stand for.

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Make no mistake, the Satanistic group is a hate group, organized with a specific purpose to mock and demon[ize] Christian beliefs. They could very easily rebrand as an open-minded group, scientific group, or even an atheist group.

Choosing to brand themselves as a Satanic group serves only to express hate. 

Lisa Davis has all the arrogance of someone who wrote a report for class without ever reading the book. She has no clue what the ASS Club does or what The Satanic Temple stands for, but she has the audacity to claim Satanists are worse than literal Nazis or KKK members. (You know. Christian hate groups.)

The Seven Fundamental Tenets espoused by The Satanic Temple include things like urging members to “act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures,” rectify any mistakes “and resolve any harm that might have been caused,” and respect the freedom of others.

Those are the values she believes are hateful.

The Satanic Temple itself doesn’t mock or demonize Christianity, but the elementary school clubs absolutely avoid any denigration of religion. It’s not about putting others down; it’s about lifting kids up no matter where they’re coming from. Unlike the Good News Club, there’s no indoctrination, no hellfire, no threats of eternal damnation.

To jump to all those erroneous conclusions on the basis of the work “Satan,” without doing any serious research into the thing she’s railing against, reveals just how unqualified she is for the job she volunteered to do.

Notice that she never once explained what the After School Satan Club did in other schools—or proposed to do at hers. It’s not like it was a secret. It was just easier for her to compare them to actual hate groups, assuming that conservatives like her would be gullible enough to believe her lies without ever looking into the matter themselves.

By the way, plenty of Christians would argue that the existence of an atheist group would also be inherently anti-religious or anti-Christian.

Davis didn’t just stop with that speech, though. On February 11, just before the club’s first meeting, she organized a “prayer walk” using her official board trustee account:

Right afterwards, she shared pictures of herself and friends creating a “shield of love, protection and God’s presence” around the school:

Apparently, when community members complained about this breach of church/state separation on her Instagram feed, they were blocked or deleted.

Now the Freedom From Religion Foundation is getting involved.

Attorney Chris Line documented everything I mentioned above and sent a letter to Board President Krista Castellanos calling on her to put a stop to this before the district gets in any legal trouble.

“While board members are free to promote their personal religious beliefs however they wish in their personal capacities outside of the school board, as government officials they cannot be allowed to abuse their position to promote their personal religious beliefs and to denigrate members of minority religions,” FFRF Staff Attorney Chris Line writes to Board of Trustees President Krista Castellanos.

There’s no threat of a lawsuit. There’s only a simple request to follow the law and keep the faith-based ignorance confined to home or church or wherever else Lisa Davis wants to spread her bigotry. As it stands, her complaints didn’t do anything to prevent this club from meeting, which is really what matters.

That doesn’t make her whining okay. It just means it’s not an automatic legal issue… yet.

Davis, by the way, was elected to the board in 2020, beating her opponent by a scant 2% of the vote. Elections matter, people.