Hail Yes!

As someone who regards organized religion with healthy suspicion (and the dominant organized religions in the United States with something more like casual disdain), I've had a particular documentary movie on my radar for a while now. I was finally able to watch it (streaming now on Hulu!), and was not disappointed.

Hail Satan? (with the question mark) is an examination of The Satanic Temple. Over 95 minutes, you learn about its birth as a sort of cheeky protest against theocracy, and follow it through its growth into a movement where religiosity and activism mingle. (So: a religion.) Director Penny Lane gets complete access to the key players within The Satanic Temple, and she uses it to present a compelling tale of, as she put it in an interview, "watching a new religion get born, right before our eyes, and how goofy and weird that looks, especially if you’re not part of it."

What The Satanic Temple is essentially doing is lifting up equality and social justice as the basis for a religion. While the documentary is only 3 years old, and the Temple itself only 10 years old, the need for (and righteousness of) that cause seems to me only to have intensified in that time. As actions are taken in the name of conventional religions with increasing fervor, secularism is deserving of equal fervor. Why not embrace that with a religious passion?

The work of The Satanic Temple would make a largely overlapping Venn diagram with the beliefs of an atheist. But interviewees in the film make a compelling case for why atheism is not enough. A growing movement needs to foster a sense of community. It needs symbols to signal to outsiders and to each other. And you do not have to wait for all that to develop organically; you can take up the symbols and community that have been rejected by others and jump-start your way to a strong statement.

The Satanic Temple may have started as a put-on, but it's very much not that now. It's not to be taken literally... but the most savvy people in their membership know that tongue must remain planted firmly in cheek, lest it undermine how sincerely they are perceived. The documentary essentially left me feeling: "how is this not a religion?" For sure, they're out there doing... heh-heh... Lucifer's work.

I definitely recommend watching Hail Satan? I give the movie an A-. (The movement itself? A+.)