The Satanic Temple, a religious group that purports to worship Satan, made international news with their bold statue of Baphomet some years back and this documentary is about the organization itself. As it turns out, the members do not actually worship Satan and do not even believe in the existence of Satan but they do make use of the imagery and Christian mythology to effectively troll Christians and to defend challenges against the separation of state and religion in the United States.

Director Penny Lane was given behind the scenes access for the purpose of documenting the workings of the organization, beginning with how it started as something of a prank conceived by two founders who are careful to hide their real identities. In fact, for their first public event, they even hired an actor to speak on their behalf. One of the co-founders speaks in this documentary but his face is unrevealed. The other however soon realized that the organization needed to be represented by someone who really believes in it and so, under the pseudonym Lucien Greaves, becomes its public face. As they gain recognition for their activities such as holding a ‘Pink Mass’ at the grave of the mother of the founder of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, they are surprised by how many people ask to be involved and so it morphs into a real national movement. Their most well known campaign is of course to ask that a statue of Baphomet be placed alongside slabs of the Ten Commandments. However as they grow bigger they also find the need to discipline and cut off chapters and leaders who espouse views that are too extreme.

This documentary is nothing special in terms of filmmaking technique but makes up for it from how interesting its subject matter is. As it was first conceived, the Satanic Temple comes across as being silly in the beginning with its hired spokesperson looking like an unconvincing cosplayer. However when Greaves himself becomes more actively involved, it becomes much more serious as he brings intellectual heft and strong speaking skills to their efforts. They are at their best when working within the confines of the law to expose contradictions and hypocrisy in the United States’ supposed separation of church and state, arguing that as the government is not allowed to choose between favored religions, all other religions must be accorded the same rights and privileges as Christianity, including a made-up one such as theirs. Choosing to “worship” Satan is of course meant to provoke Christians even further though they don’t actually believe in the existence of Satan. This is understandable as many of their members are self-described post-Christians, former Christians who have turned against the religion and want to hit back at it.

It’s also laudable how this film shows the organizations’ growing pains as it becomes more of a serious religion and not just a loose umbrella group of rebels and performance artists. Even so, this film seems to underplay its internal power struggles and disagreements. For example, Greaves effectively asks one of the early prominent members Jex Blackmore to leave after she threatens to kill the US president as part of one of her performances. However Blackmore maintains that she never promoted that event as a TST event and the director Penny Lane seems to agree with her. Furthermore more than one chapter of the group has left due to disagreements with the national level leadership. It just goes to show that however noble the intentions of any group, and even if they espouse rational beliefs and principles, the moment the group grows beyond a certain size, there will be politics.

When asked why they are Satanists and not just atheists, Greaves gives a good answer in that atheists define themselves as not being something while they can positively assert that they for specific values and principles as laid out in their well thought out set of tenets. At the same time, it’s clear that they are strongly motivated at hitting out against Christianity specifically, which I think is an inherent limitation in how far they can go and what they can achieve. They are doing great work as political activists and they will never be a true religion.