When it Comes to Politics, Hell is not Sending its Best

For all the talk by Dems of separation of church and state, they still seem to attract a huge amount of spiritual support; just not the kind most people have in mind.

May 15, 2025

Despite the concerns of some of my colleagues, living in a blue state like Minnesota is not as terrible as one might think. For one thing, it is generally only the major metro areas or college towns that cause the state to vote blue. Drive twenty minutes south of where I live and you will see all trappings of pro-life-MAGA-red-state patriotism on full display. Secondly, I hear more about what my state representatives and senators are up to in the legacy media than I do in the local papers, because they really don’t do much when they are in state. This is especially true of our reclusive governor and failed vice-president running candidate Tim Walz, and his tire-sniffing wife Gwen, whose apparent ability to “code talk” to white cisgender men does not seem to work well among the locals. Tim couldn’t even be bother to show up for a Hands Off Our Democracy protest which took place at the state capitol last month.

It is this sort of local absentee politicking which recently garnered some negative press towards our “knucklehead” governor when a plaque was left (and still sits) in a hallway in the state capital. The plaque was offered as a token of appreciation from the Democratic Coalition of Satanic Worshipers, thanking governor Walz for “not standing in the way of spreading Satanism,” after Walz allowed the group to place a “holiday” display in the capitol building in December of 2024.

The plaque references a display that was permitted to be set up back in December of 2024 at the state capitol by the Satanic Temple. It featured a pentagram, a phoenix and a description of a satanic ritual, along with the inscription “You are your own god.”

The effort to get the display into the capitol building (alongside the other standard Christmas displays) was initiated but the Satanic Temple, a non-theistic organization formed in 2012, but which does not ascribe to the existence of a literal supernatural satanic figure. They espouse instead a literary Satan, as a symbol to promote such trite values such as "benevolence and empathy, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense, oppose injustice and undertake noble pursuits.” They make use of satire, theatrics, legal action and other forms of activism to promote the standard litany of progressive causes such as civil rights, social justice, “bodily integrity” (abortion), egalitarianism, separation of church and state and other woke causes.

The whole debacle, from the display to the thank you plaque, highlighted how the “line between lunacy and leadership have been blurred beyond recognition.” The Temple of Satan, as well as the local Minnesota Satanists, hailed their placement of the display as a win for “religious plurality,” even after the two groups severed ties with each other earlier this year. Republican representative Peter Stauber lamented that “"When you get a DFL [Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party] trifecta, you get a Satanic display at our state Capitol. During the holidays… what a disgrace. Only in Walz's Minnesota."

At the time of these developments, governor Walz was missing in action and eventually had his office issue a statement which claimed that “The Governor does not agree with the display and did not approve it. But the First Amendment means that he does not police speech in the State Capitol. That's true whether it's a religious display, a political protest, or a Minnesotan advocating for a policy,"

The Danger Behind the Dimwittedness

Pope Paul VI famously said in a homily in 1972 that “the smoke of satan had entered into the Temple of God” as an allegory to all of the cultural upheavals going on during the 1960’s and 70’s, which accelerated our culture’s slide into the post-Christian world that we live in today. It is a world where politics and woke ideology have become a substitute religion for a multitude of Americans, where government buildings are labeled “sacred spaces” and “temples of American democracy.” It is also a world where satanic “holiday” displays are just one item among other religious displays that are allowed in our public spaces.

Granted, most of the people belonging to the Satanic Temple or to the local Democratic Coalition of Satan Worshipers, are not engaged (at least publicly) in any form of occult or black magic worship of the fallen angel that we Christians know as Satan. Moreover, as Joe Heschmeyer has also pointed out, neither was The Satanic Grotto, the group that held a “black mass” at the Kansas state capitol back in March. Both of these organizations (and others like them) are leftovers from various Athiest+ communities which sprang up in the 2010’s in the wake of the New Atheism movement of the previous decade. These groups were peopled by atheists who tried to turn their philosophical position (i.e., their atheism) into an ideological foundation for their de jour progressive social justice beliefs.

However, they soon found out that a lack of belief in God does not automatically translate into affirmative principles with which to live by (let alone support their woke activism) and realized that in our contemporary anti-Christian society they were nothing special. They consequently turned from being online edge-lords to cultural provocateurs. They set out to engage in publicity and legal stunts, to (mis)use the First Amendment to fight what they have said is Christianity’s “privileged place” in American society, by promoting various holiday or “Snake-tivity” displays and forming after school satanic clubs across the country. Knowing that most schools or social institutions will be averse to spending time and resources to fight even the hint of a lawsuit, or that a governor who will mandate putting tampons in boys’ bathrooms will just roll over in response to their unique demands, they have successfully inserted themselves into places like the Minnesota state capitol building.

With all that said, does this means there is nothing dangerous with all this dimwittedness and cultural cowardice? Certainly not! In a similar way that the Hamasniks or Intifada wannabees currently protesting on college campuses are not likely to take up arms or plant bombs, they nonetheless give credence and encouragement to those who eventually will. Likewise, even if groups like the Satanic Temple, the Satanic Grotto, or even the oldest of these American organizations, the Church of Satan founded in 1966 by Anton LaVey, claim to have non-theistic beliefs about Satan, their presence and notoriety gives power and legitimacy to those who do worship Satan, or are at least to practitioners of the occult and black magic. This is all the more pernicious given that it involves spiritual warfare, which transcends both culture and politics.

More than a Political Fight for Rights

In the gospel of Matthew Christ spoke about how an evil spirit will be driven out of a man, only to come back with seven other spirits that are even more evil than the original one. The state of the man “becomes worse than the first” and “so shall it be also with this evil generation.” Well, ours appears to be that kind of generation. One where woke-womyn and milquetoast-mensch are elected to positions of leadership, but then stand for nothing but a prefab and prepackaged belief system which evirates them into the worst interpretations of their own laws. One where the culture grows cold to its Christian heritage, and what results sevenfold are satanic displays at Christmas time and a thank you plaque placed in a state capital building honoring our leaders’ indifference to the beliefs of vast majority of Americans.

We are all aware of our rights/duties on the political level to learn about and defend the First Amendment, in particular when it comes to these satanic groups who thrust themselves into the political sphere. However, this fight involves more than simply laws and rights, as St. Paul reminds us:

Because the fight is both political and spiritual, we need to act accordingly in both realms in order to make any real changes in our culture. After all, it is the prevailing culture and zeitgeist which produces the dithering politicians that allow satanism (in any form) to take up space in our public places, in a way that our founding fathers would never have allowed.

Thankfully, pushback is already happening as President Trump has (at the political level) pardoned pro-life and other Christian activists who were wrongly persecuted by the previous administration. And on the spiritual level, despite all his flaw and gaffs, there seems to no shortage of people willing to pray for or offer other spiritual succor to Trump. During his campaign he received a Scapular and a relic of the true cross from a Carmelite priest, and a week before the election was given a copy of the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe by Catholic and pro-life actor Eduardo Verástegui. After his victory, he was given an ornate cross by Greek Orthodox archbishop Elpidophoros, who compared Trump to Constantine with the words “Let this cross guide you as it once guided Constantine,” and “May it make America invincible!”

Lest one think these are just the same kind of theatrics that the Satanic Temple engages in, there is proof that the spiritual aid that Trump is receiving has been effective. During the same week (before the election) Trump received the copy of the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe, it was reported in several smaller news outlets that the wiccans and witches of “Witch-Tok” were complaining that their spells to bind or “freeze” Trump were not working. One anonymous “witch” reported that Trump had a shield around him and that “I hate to say this, but don't do magic against him. He has a form of protection surrounding him that feeds off of magic done against him.”

While many may laugh or scoff at these reports, it does highlight three important points. One is the power of prayer, even if it is for a man who is in no way a saint or in any state of grace. For whatever reason, Trump appears, like Constantine or the Persian Cyrus, to have been preserved by the good graces of those praying for him to play his part in God’s providence. Secondly, this should not be taken to mean that Trump is some type of anointed president or that he is on a mission from God. Like King David, he is a flawed leader but who nevertheless has done much to preserve our nation’s Christian heritage and uphold religious freedoms, so that we are free to fight to keep our culture sane and saintly.

Third and finally, the fact that the same people who shout “separation of church and state,” and who call themselves the “party of science,” are also the party of whiny witches plying their craft against a presidential candidate, should tell you all you need to know about the current nexus of political and spiritual warfare. One has to wonder how the average American voter, let alone a Christian one, processes that—which is greater, their aversion to certain political policies, or the occult? The truth is the Left and the Dems wield tremendous political and spiritual power because of their support of abortion (which is itself a kind of blood ritual) and are at the same time aided by indifferent and low-info voters and pliable politicians.

However, for the time being we can take consolation in the knowledge that when it comes to our battles against the “spiritual wickedness” of the Satanic Temple, The Satanic Grotto, Witch-Tok and leaders like timid Tim Walz, it is pretty clear that Hell is not sending their best.