Freedom of Religion?
A personal look into the spiritual war with a goat (it's more complicated than that but I think that sounds funny)
Freedom of Religion?
K.L. Orion
I’m a little late to the topic, but Baphomet the pagan deity was on display at the Iowa State Capitol. I say “was” because the statue was destroyed recently. I could talk about the destruction of it, who did it, why they did it, but everyone is telling you that story. For example, Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture did a very interesting article on it that goes into depth and some of the meaning. I highly recommend you check it out. As for myself, I want to talk about a more personal look into this whole thing.
Also, before I continue, I will be on vacation for the next few weeks so I will likely have a bit of a hiatus from writing. I might publish something in that time, but don’t expect much at the very least. With that announcement out of the way, on with my take.
It was maybe a week or two ago when I first became notified of the controversy soon to take place in the State Capitol. It was on Facebook during my lunch period, and I was fairly shocked when a Republican friend of mine posted an angry rant about a “satanic idol” going on display in the Iowa State Capitol. Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting such a puzzling topic to be unloaded on me at lunch, besides the usual stupid philosophical questions the people at my table ask each other about (“Would you take immortality if offered to you?” “Is there an evolutionary purpose behind uncanny valley?” “Who would win in a fight? Every Pokémon vs a billion lions?”). I was shocked by the wording of the post and just generally offended, both by the friend and the people putting up the “idol” in his words. I needed to get to the bottom of this.
I saw that the statue wasn’t Satan himself but rather Baphomet, which surprised me considering it was put up by the Satanic Temple of Iowa. Surely they worshiped Satan, right? So what the hell’s a Baphomet? I asked some of my other friends who tend to be more politically active than me and certainly know more about history and religion than me (I’m the Godzilla nerd, not the biblical scholar). They seemed just as baffled as I was. They didn’t know who the Satanic Temple of Iowa was or what on Earth Baphomet was either. That led me to do some Google searching for the wrong things, specifically on what’s a Baphomet. You see, based on the wording of the message, my initial response was to believe that Baphomet was some figure in the religion of the Satanic Temple. That is why the results of the search confused me.
I didn’t do much research on Baphomet as I quickly realized trying to fully grasp what Baphomet means from a religious standpoint would take me WEEKS. Baphomet is part of the occult rabbit hole, getting into things about pagan beliefs and the Knights Templar. So thank Baphomet for my language arts teacher. When my friend group has an objective political question, we go to him. He knows how to find facts and unbiased resources, and he also delivers this information in the funniest ways (at least for a high schooler). Before I could finish asking the question, he already knew what I was talking about and made me realize I was led to believe the entirely wrong thing.
First of all, the Satanic Temple of Iowa is not a group of devil worshipers as one might expect. Rather, they are a bunch of atheists trying to prove a point. As a matter of fact, I might not agree with all of their tactics, but their overall mission statement is one I agree with for the most part. Here’s a link to the Satanic Temple to learn more about them and determine for yourself what you think of them.
The point was it had nothing to do with Baphomet religiously. It had everything to do with Baphomet politically. The Satanic Temple isn’t a religion as it is more of a political movement fighting against the radical Christian movements. One of the main things they are fighting radical Christians over is one of our First Amendment rights, that being freedom of religion. They are also fighting for separation of church and state, another very important idea. Baphomet was put up to prove a point. If one religion can have symbols in a government building (say a Christmas tree), all religions can. If one religion can’t have symbols in a government building (say Baphomet), then none of them can. That is a logic I cannot disagree with. But that isn’t the logic I was initially led to believe.
I don’t want to single out the friend who made that post. While I do disagree with them on this topic, they are still my friend. For that reason, I will not copy the message down to protect their identity. However, I will paraphrase and give a summary. Also, the reason I am using their post as a reference is again not to single them out, but I am using them as an example of what some far right Christians believe.
The whole post was very strongly worded and angry, but it starts off with a very strong and kind of offending first line. It fell roughly along the line of, “If there ever was a reason to vote red, it’s this…” They then went on to explain how Baphomet being put up in the capitol was the “most disgraceful thing to happen in this country” and that “we should not fall so low as to worship idols” or something like that. They then said something about how this is “one nation UNDER GOD, not this unholy thing” and claimed that this is the kind of country Democrats want; one ruled by Satanists.
Yeah, not a very nicely worded or approachable message.
Unfortunately, the tactic of language used here is one very common by far right politicians and supporters. Even worse is the fact that far left people are also guilty of using this kind of language. I AM guilty of it too. The reason for this message isn’t supposed to be convincing Democrats to consider the Republican side. It actually is intended to make Democrats offended. They didn’t write this for a Democrat audience, but a fence-sitter and Republican audience. They wanted to make people mad, angry at Democrats and promote the lie that liberals are Satanic pedophiles. And that leads me to the next thing about this message.
It is filled to the brim with misinformation.
How do I know? I FELL FOR IT.
I nearly went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole just trying to figure out what Baphomet was, instead of actually getting closer to the truth. But the interesting thing here is that I don’t think this friend of mine intended to lie. I think they believe what they said to some degree. They didn’t make the lie, they’re just repeating it. They believe the lie. And I think that’s what a lot of extremist Christians fell for. They believe that actual Satanists put up a demon idol for worship. Which is probably the scariest thing about this whole ordeal.
I think there is an argument to be made that the Satanic Temple was in the wrong with their logic considering they don’t actually worship Baphomet. If Hindu symbols were put up by a Hindu church, that would be different. There is also an argument to be made that they were trying to “piss off” Christians, which isn’t good. But that isn’t the argument any of these Christians against it are using. Rather, these Christians proved the whole point Baphomet was put up in the first place.
The arguments they are using go against freedom of religion.
They are offended that another supposedly “demonic” religion is allowed to put things up in government buildings. They want to get rid of that religion’s voice. Hell, they want to get rid of that religion period. The fact that the post used the phrase “under God, not Baphomet” proves this. That is a blatant statement against freedom of religion.
I think the Satanic Temple succeeded. They did what they wanted to do. They made a damn good point. They made a damn good demonstration. When this thing was put up, what did radical Christians do? They went to war with it. They posted angry messages about it online. They held prayer groups in the capitol to fight, and I quote, “Spiritual War,” unquote, with this thing. In the end, one of them decapitated it. While it might not seem like it at first, the destruction of the statue was the best thing for the Satanic Temple because it proved their point. It showed that extremist Christian groups are willing to resort to oppressive and violent tactics to get what they want. Good for you, Satanic Temple; you put on one hell of a show (pun very much intentional).
One of the things I find most interesting here is the fact that this Baphomet statue wasn’t an idol until the Christians literally made it one. If I made a statue of a cow-lizard hybrid, would it immediately become an idol? No. At the moment, it’s just one really ugly piece of art (if you can call it that). The moment it becomes an idol is when I give it spiritual meaning and power. The Satanic Temple, as is already well established, doesn’t believe in Baphomet. They didn’t believe the statue had power. Actually, I take that back. They did believe it did. They knew it did. It had power over the extremist Christians.
Those Christians believed that it truly beckoned the presence of the devil. They believed it was an agent of the devil. It had no true spiritual meaning until they insisted on fighting spiritual war with it. All the power that Baphomet statue had was power the Christians who feared it so greatly gave it.
Before I finish, I’d like to add something. A personal opinion, really (I say that as if this whole thing hasn’t been an opinion - it’s been an opinion backed with logical thinking, okay?). Jesus Christ told his followers to love thine enemy, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and to treat others the way you yourself would want to be treated. If you are standing in a state capitol having the prayer equivalent to a rap battle with an inanimate object in the shape of a humanoid goat and choosing to ignore the hungry who need fed and the poor who need clothed–choosing to hate your enemy more than loving your neighbor–then the Satan you fear so badly has already won.
Just something to think about.
Much to think about.
You are so wise beyond your years!