Activist Asks To Lead Satanic Prayer At FL High School Football Game

SOUTH FLORIDA — After the U.S. Supreme Court backed a high school football coach’s right to pray at the 50-yard line, a South Florida artist and political activist has reached out to a Broward County high school asking to lead a Satanic invocation at one of its football games.

Chaz Stevens, an atheist who founded the Mount Jab Church of Mars activist group, reached out to Broward County Schools, asking to lead a Satanic prayer at a football game at Deerfield Beach High School, which he attended.

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“I want to give a prayer at the 50-yard line at my alma mater,” he told Patch. “I assume they’re going to tell me to kiss off. This all started when the U.S. Supreme Court, aka the ‘American Taliban,’ sided in favor of a high school coach in Bremerton, Washington, and now he is allowed to give his prayer after the game.”

At the end of June, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Bremerton High School Coach Joseph Kennedy. The conservative majority on the court argued the prayers came once the football games had ended, when Kennedy was no longer responsible for students, according to the Associated Press.

• Related Story: Bible Removal From Public Schools Sought By South FL Activist

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority in the ruling, declared, “The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike."

Gorsuch noted that the coach “prayed during a period when school employees were free to speak with a friend, call for a reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend to other personal matters” and “while his students were otherwise occupied.”

He added, in his ruling, “Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic — whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head.”

Stevens has also reached out to the Bremerton School District about leading a prayer at one of their football games.

“There’s been no word back from them on that,” Stevens said.

In a news release, the activist said, "I'm old enough to remember when the separation of Church and State was a cherished constitutional concept here. Now it seems, 'the hell with facts,' they say— tossing aside our established laws like some dirty laundry in their lustful eagerness for religious expression."

Stevens is known throughout the state for his satirical political activism and art.

In April, he wrote letters to more than 60 of Florida’s school district superintendents requesting that their school systems remove the Bible from classrooms, libraries and any instructional materials used by students.

His request was in response to the Florida Department of Education’s ban of more than 50 math textbooks and Gov. Ron DeSantis signing House Bill 1467 into law, giving parents more say in their school district’s instructional materials, library books and textbooks.

In 2015, he launched a project called “Satan or Silence” after listening to a religious invocation before a Dania Beach City Commission meeting.

“They said ‘Jesus Christ’ 23 times in under two minutes,” he said.

That’s when Stevens learned “to flip bureaucracy against itself and use the weight of bureaucracy against itself,” he said.

He told the city commission that he was a Satanist seeking equal protection and rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and asked if he could perform a Satanic prayer before a commission meeting. He made similar requests in other South Florida cities.

As a result, several cities, including Dania Beach, Deerfield Beach, Coral Springs and Delray Beach, all dropped prayers from their meetings, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Lauderdale-By-The-Sea is the only community to welcome him at a town commission meeting about five years ago, Stevens told Patch. He’ll lead a prayer at an upcoming meeting there at the end of July.

In 2013, after a Nativity was put on display at the state Capitol building, his holiday exhibit representing Festivus — a fake holiday from the 1990s sitcom “Seinfeld” — was allowed in Tallahassee.

Stevens built the 6-foot Festivus pole using empty Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans and PVC pipe, according to NPR. The made-up holiday also calls for people to celebrate with an “airing of grievances,” where they share their disappointments and issues from the previous year.

More recently, this past December, he created another non-traditional holiday display in the state Capitol rotunda — cardboard cutouts of Dr. Anthony Fauci dressed as Santa Claus and Fox News show host Tucker Carlson dressed as the grim reaper.

“My message is always wrapped in humor. It makes me laugh and I do some beautiful art. It’s all wrapped in my art,” he said. “My art is wrapped in activism, and it makes me happy.”

This story includes reporting from the Associated Press.