Thanks to Harper's Weekly, we did not miss this important news: "The British Armed Forces has officially recognised its first registered Satanist."
This means he will be allowed to perform Satanic rituals on board, according to the BBC.
It's about time, but I can't help laughing when I think about how many Satanists out there are going to be totally put off Satan forever now that he's become an officially sanctioned religion.
Posted by Alan Hogue at October 26, 2004 03:54 PMNo surprise, really. Given what we've heard from the Church of Satan in San Francisco, it fits the traditions of the Royal Navy pretty well.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at October 26, 2004 04:38 PMTechnically, I think this is at the discretion of his captain and only applies to the vessel he's currently on. If Satanism became an officially recognized religion across the armed forces there could presumably be Satanic clergy, and so on. In any case, the Church of Satan sounds to me more like a cut-price branch of the Playboy Philosophy than an honest-to-goodness cult of evil.
Posted by: Alan Allport at October 26, 2004 04:48 PMIt's neither, really. It's basically a lot of hedonistic, extreme libertarian reactionaries who think that shocking people has some kind of spiritual value.
But the Church of Satan Satanist is not the only kind. Most of them do have a lot in common as far as I can tell, though. The main difference seems to be to what degree the Satanist is simply practicing an inverted form of Catholicism.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at October 26, 2004 04:58 PM