NOTE: This item expresses the views of the individual to whom the item is ascribed and does not necessarily reflect the position of the WRF as a whole.]

 It started when I looked through the Christmas card display—not a single one on Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus.  I was surprised, but then I remembered how proud I am to be an American.  Not a Massachusetts Bay American

though Harvard was a decent Puritan school for a while.  There you had to be a church member to qualify to vote, now that’s not close to being American.  No, my real America is Roger Williams and Rhode Island, the place that welcomed even Baptists and encouraged them to vote.  (Baptists are dead against any kind of state church, and those old Europeans thought that was subversive).  Rhode Island won decisively and the American way since is to welcome folks of any religion even the nutty ones.  So Schwenkfelders were OK in Pennsylvania, and my Calvinist Methodist folks could come and support their own church without having to pay tithes to Anglicans.  Wouldn’t anyone be proud to be an American!

It takes a while to catch on what that means.  The Ten Commandments in a state court house, of course not.  A Nativity creche in a public park—well OK, if you let other religions do that too.  Now that’s where I think it gets interesting, because now Satanists want to have their display too.  They are truly entitled and I’m so glad, since the alternative is still a state religion and we’ve had more than enough of them, haven’t we?  Call that cultural Protestantism and it’s just deceptive.   

What would a compelling Satan slogan look like?  I think right away of: `I am the Deadend, the Lie and the Death, would that work for You?`  How would that sound? Pretty fair at first, but if you’re committed to lying, how could you tell the truth about that, that would be the problem.  To do this right, we’ve got to get into the (evil)spirit of it.

First off, this getup of red longjohns is just silly.  The pitchfork, how rural is that? Satan is a fashion plate, I’m sure of that.  We need a cutting-edge wardrobe to start, and a winning smile, a friendly welcoming smile with arms reaching out to hold you tight.

More than that, the message would have to be comforting, welcoming, accepting, open.  Nothing at all exclusive or off-putting or clear.  Friendly ambiguity would be the way, don’t you think?  Something like: `I’m so happy if it works for you.` Maybe more to the point: ‘in a universe where everything is unknown, how terrible it is that there are people who send the message that they have the truth, and the rest of us are deluded.  Let’s all go beyond that, and be grown up and enjoy each other’s warm fuzzy yarns.’   Not quite right yet, needs to be more engaging, that’s the important part, don’t we know?

Bring it on, Satanists, you can do it!  There’ll be space right next to the Wise Men, you can even fake feeding those worn-out camels.  But you know, I bet we could do it better?  Youth pastors, this is the chance you’ve been waiting for, sign up those bored to death kids to make their own Satanist exhibit, that’ll give them something to be proud of.  The precedent is already there, Christians can’t exclude anti-Christians from being members and even officers of their college groups, so no way could Satanists exclude us.  

Ask the kids the best way to do it.  They know the lies backward and forward, they’re a generation ahead of us, at least.  Then they could push and push the lies so far--that Baby Jesus next door would look better and better.  It’s well worth the try.