After-school 'Satan club' at PA middle school continues to face scrutiny

Hellertown, PA (CNN) — An after-school club being formed at a Pennsylvania school is getting a lot of attention.

The group is called the "After school Satan Club."

The Satanic Temple says it gives students an alternative to Christian clubs.

The school district says the club doesn't break any laws or policies, but what do parents think?

Marjulee Colon says she couldn't believe it when she heard that the club had been approved at Saucon Valley Middle School.

"I thought that it was satire. I thought that it was a joke."

But the national campaign director at the satanic temple says it's anything but a joke.

"We are run by the Satanic Temple, and the club is brought to you by your local, friendly, self-identified, non-theistic satanists."

June Everett says the Satanic Temple doesn't believe in the same Satan that Christians do.

“Although the Christian majority in this country does believe that Satan is a different symbol, to us, we do not view Satan as evil, we do not view Satan as trying to wreak havoc on communities and do terrible things. We look to Satan as a positive symbol."

But for Colon, pentagrams and demons are not positive symbols.

She already has her three children in private school, but she's worried for other parents.

"There are so many parents who cannot make the same choice that I’m making, and if we don't speak up for this type of outlandish disregard to those of us who do have Judeo-Christian values, then when is it going to stop?"

Colon is planning a prayer event outside the school on March 8th, the same day the club is first supposed to meet.

There are already more than a hundred people signed up on Facebook.

But the superintendent said in a letter to parents, "the district has approved the after-school Satan club."

And Everett says that the community should learn to accept it.

"We don't have to agree, we don't have to believe the same, but we do have the same rights that everybody else does to these public spaces."

The school was closed on Wednesday after someone left a threatening voicemail at the school district office on Tuesday.

The superintendent says the threat referenced the after-school Satan club.

Because of that threat, and the disruption it caused, the superintendent says she is recommending a full review of the club's use of school property.

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