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Satanic Temple Iowa

Iowa Satanic Temple Display Sparks Debate Over Religious Liberty

The Satanic Temple display at the Iowa State Capitol has become a national controversy over whether such a display should be allowed, or unmolested, in a government building. The Iowa state legislature allows for displays to be done on a two-week basis. Governor Kim Reynolds called to fight bad speech with good speech while professing Christian state Rep. Jon Dunwell has become an online punching bag over his defense of the display.

Dunwell is defending the Satanic Temple display under the guise of “religious liberty” and the Constitution. The Satanic Temple is not actually a professing religion and functions more as a Reddit-tier satirical movement. But this is religious liberty to many politicians.

Governor Ron DeSantis was in Iowa for a CNN town hall and was asked about this and pointed out that it was the Trump administration that granted the religious tax exemption to the Satanic Temple.

DeSantis argues that it’s possible the legislature caved because of this decision.

Religious Liberty and Christianity

It’s increasingly proven that supporting religious liberty for pagan religions is untenable with Christianity, and for some Christians to support this as though their interpretation of the US Constitution is a higher standard than Scripture is a not gonna make it mentality.

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2 Responses

  1. Auron MacIntyre is correct about what the founders would’ve done, and they would’ve been able to do so legally because the Constitution was originally established solely to limit the federal government, not states, counties, cities, towns, or local governments. At that time states and local governments had official religions, which at the time was different Christian denominations. To properly understand the bill of rights requires first understanding that the original federalist model, which now no longer exists. Since reconstruction, we have a nationalist model.

    The founders understood that, in matters of belief and the standards that rule the public square, one man’s freedom can be another man’s tyranny. That is, after all, why the Pilgrims first came here. We see this playing out now with the porneia cult. To us, imposition of their beliefs is tyrannical forced violation of conscience, and extortion to defy the Lord and His word if we are to live and survive. To them, God’s standards are tyrannical and we’re just a bunch of power-hungry control freaks.

    Now what we have is, to make up a new word, multistandardism. Rather than have one standard they strive to have any and all standards rule equally. And that cannot work. It’s in fact, fairly stupid, but since the federalist model has been destroyed, while the rest of the Constitution remains, that’s basically the only alternative. Courts have since tried to balance it all out and make it work, but the truth is it can’t work. The result can only be total moral anarchy and conflict. The end result is the complete absence of any standards at all. It is baseless moral relativism. Standards changing every five minutes according to whim, whichever way the wind blows. House built on shifting sand. The result is a complete destruction and searing of conscience, and when that destruction of conscience gets bad enough, totalitarian forms of government become more plausible. The founders understood all this.

    For this reason, pitting this “multistandardism” against religious liberty is a bit of a false dichotomy. There are other options, as workable as humanly possible, and one such option is federalism. If Iowa had an official state religion, as states originally did, this satanic mess in the state capital wouldn’t be allowed. The satanists could go live in a city or town where satanism is the official religion, display all they want and leave the rest of us alone.

    1. And Desantis should know better than to imply that the federal government has the authority and power to decide what is or is not a valid religion or system of belief. With an argument like that, he’d fit right in with the authoritarian, big-government progressives.

      But I say it is a “bit” of a false dichotomy because the alternatives such as federalism are, at this point, all but impossible. We’ve had a nationalist system for the past 150 years. Since the vast majority of the population has been Christian, it has taken that long for the resultant conflict to become as problematic as it has become.

      I’m no expert, but I’ve thought about this stuff quite a bit. And I believe the main reason it would be all but impossible to go back to the federalist model is that so much money is funneled through and distributed by the federal government. If the Christian town is being forced to subsidize the Pagan town, then at that point the purpose is defeated. It’s still a violation of conscience whether you’re forced to support it next door or in another town. In many ways, the big government progressives are the nationalists, bent on imposing their “religion” on everyone else. And going back to the original model would be very difficult. But to properly understand the Constitution and Bill of Rights, I believe it’s still important to understand their interdependence and interworking with and within that federalist model.

      Where the anti Christian nationalist crowd fails miserably is their eagerness and compulsion to defend what currently exists as if it is the best thing since sliced bread. That’s how and why we get Russell Moore funding the building of a mosque because, as he yelled from the podium, “Baptists are for freedom!”. As if our system of government is perfect, created by God, and therefore God must support all manner of wickedness, and expect us to do the same in the name of liberty. As Christians we should not fall into the trap of that absurd false dilemma, essentially that if we don’t fund the building of mosques then we must be pro-slavery. When we do that we get carried away and caught up in the political back and forth, and dragged down into the mire just as Desantis did in the effort to go after his opponent, as a supposed conservative, essentially advocated for the federal government to have the power to determine what is and is not a valid religion. If he’s going to do that, he might as well just run as a democrat. Not that I support any of them or either party at this point.

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