After-school Satanic clubs are bad for elementary school students, but "to allow the government authority to decide which after-school religious clubs are kosher and which ones aren't" is far worse, evangelical leader Dr. Richard Land told Newsmax TV on Wednesday.
"If we start doing that, I can see them saying: 'Well, you can't have an evangelical Christian club. It's a hate group because it teaches that lesbian and homosexual behavior is immoral," Land, president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, told "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth.
"When you start letting the government have that kind of control, it's pretty scary," he said. "That's more frightening to me than Satanic clubs are."
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The Satanic Temple, founded in New York in 2014, said this month that it planned to introduce its After School Satan Club to elementary schools nationwide this school year to counter the Good News Clubs.
Those clubs, operated by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, teach evangelical Christianity.
"It's critical that children understand that there are multiple perspectives on all issues, and that they have a choice in how they think," co-founder Doug Mesner told The Washington Post.
Land told Hayworth that requiring parental approval could be the best deterrent to these clubs.
"What's safeguarding this is that they have to have parental approval," he said. "Since you're dealing with minors, you have to have parental approval before you can go to any of these clubs.
"We're really forced to choose between one of three options," Land added. "The first option is to eliminate all after-school clubs, second to allow Satanic clubs, or to allow the government authority to decide which after-school religious clubs are kosher and which ones aren't.
"And, frankly, I think that that option is the most dangerous of the three."
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