Satanists Comes To Delco With Altruistic, Charitable Mission

DELAWARE COUNTY, PA — Satanism has arrived in Delaware County. But residents should not be alarmed.

In fact, Delaware County residents should welcome the group's presence, as the organization does not worship Satan and in fact provides arguments for separation of church and state, as well as organizes charitable efforts.

Delaware County native Joseph Rose started Satanic Delco back in early February.

"People think it means something that it doesn't," Rose told Patch.

The temple, which was officially founded in 2013, serves to "encourage benevolence and empathy among all people, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense, oppose injustice, and undertake noble pursuits," according to its website.

Satanic Temple co-founder Malcolm Jarry spawned the idea in response to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which was established under President George W. Bush, the New York Times reports.

The Satanic Temple has seven key tenets:

1. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
2. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
3. One's body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone.
4. The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.
5. Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.
6. People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.
7. Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.

The temple is not affiliated with the Church of Satan, which Rose said was the only option for the anti-religious kid he was in the 90s but later found the temple was better suited for him when it came about. While both organizations are essentially rooted in atheism, the temple tends to offer a more altruistic approach and differs from philosophies of social Darwinism present in the Church of Satan.

And the altruism of the temple has already come to fruition in the Satanic Delco group.

Rose, who said about 200 people are involved with the group, said it has already held a collection drive for a non-profit organization in Delaware County.

"We figured if we had the numbers we could do something good," he said.

Rose said he didn't want to just start a Facebook group to have an online community, but wanted to use Facebook as an organizational tool to come up with positive actions to take in Delaware County.

"We started talking about what we could do," he said. "We settled on a charity and asked them what they needed and started collecting items through an Amazon wishlist and even had a local business that contributed."

Rose and members planned to host a sort of "debut" event for the group, at which they planned to announce the donation, but the coronavirus outbreak put that on hold.

"One of our priorities is use the number of members for good, to support charities and other organizations we can help," he said. Part of the debut event was to raise awareness and education about the group, as it is an easily misunderstood group.

He declined to identify the charity of their choice to prevent others who have pushed back against the group's presence from undercutting their effort.

And the group has indeed experienced pushback.

The Satanic Delco website was hacked, Rose said. At the moment, it's inaccessible due to the hosting service taking it down after the hack, he said.

Rose initially posted a basic message about the group on numerous community Facebook pages across Delaware County.

The response was relatively mixed, which might come as a surprise.

He said some users would "freak out" and call for him to be banned from the groups.

"In enough cases, I was," he said with a laugh.

But amid the outrage were a solid number of people who were interested.

He said some people were just curious, some were bent on "infiltrating" the group for potential nefarious purposes, but a good portion were on board from the start and were familiar with the temple.

Those who want to join do so via the private Facebook group. When you click to join, you are given two questions to answer. After doing so, you get reviewed and then typically a friend request from Rose himself who will then start a conversation to gauge the applicant's true intentions.

Recently, he's "cut the fat" from the group by getting rid of members who don't participate or who have shown to go against the group's values.

"There are plenty of members that join out of innocent curiosity, maybe thinking it's a silly Satan meme page," he said. "Over time, you can find people who aren't aligned in a way that makes the most sense."

Rose said the goal is a unified group aimed at doing good for Delaware County and the surrounding area.

While the coronavirus has put the kibosh on some of the group's in-person activities — which included movie nights, icebreaker meetings, and a book club — Zoom meetings are helping the group stay cohesive as they practice social distancing.

Once the virus has subsided enough, Rose said the group will revamp its plans to support local groups and charities while raising awareness of the temple.