Hail Satan?

What, exactly, is Satanism? Is it the worship of the Biblical "adversary," who evolves throughout the Old and New Testaments from someone with whom God can have a friendly wager over, say, Job's faithfulness to a tempter who torments Jesus during his forty days of solitude in the desert? Is it a juvenile club riffing on horror movies and playing dress-up? Or is it some sort of latter-day witch-coven sort of thing, in which celebrants caper in black cowls and feast on the flesh of infants?

Turns out, in the case of the Satanic Temple at least, to be a way of pushing back at what's perceived to be rising Christian Supremacy – a theocratic impulse that threatens to turn the United States into a nation ruled by the Christian version of Sharia Law. That, at least, is the takeaway from the documentary "Hail Satan?"

Director Penny Lane ("Our Nixon," "Normal Appearances") trains her camera on Satanic Temple spokesperson and nominal leader Lucien Greaves and his followers (or, at least, spiritual compatriots) in order to tell the story of how modern Satanism was defined by the Satanic Temple, a religion that grew from three adherents to more then 15,000 in the space of a few years... at least, that's a claim that's made here.

If Greaves' version of Satanism is intended to be a corrective for overweening Christian political ambitions, it's both a timely phenomenon and one that might well have chosen the wrong tack. Greaves and others associated with the Temple insist that theirs is a fellowship based on non-violence and founded on the principle of religious freedom – actual freedom, that is, not merely a choice between trivially different flavors of the same faith tradition. In an age where secular laws are increasingly under attack (and religious, sexual, and ethnic minorities along with them) by broadly-worded exemptions from non-discrimination protections that are afforded to anyone with "deeply held religious or moral convictions," be those convictions genuine or merely claimed, it almost doesn't matter if Satanists are serious in their spiritual quest or merely pranking the sensibilities of their prim and starchy countrymen.

Whatever else they might be or do, Satanists too have sincerely held beliefs. In the case of the Satanic Temple and its adherents, the ethics of those beliefs are crystallized in a set of Seven Tenets, which are described as follows:

Tenet 1: "One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason."

Tenet 2: "The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions."

Tenet 3: "One's body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone."

Tenet 4: "The freedom of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach on the freedoms of another is to forego your own."

Tenet 5: "Belief should conform to our best scientific of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs."

Tenet 6: "If we make a mistake we should do our best to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused."

Tenet 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."

If that's the core of the Satanist creed, then it's hard to see exactly how it's a threat to anyone else's life, liberty, or even religious convictions... unless, of course, we're talking about someone wearing a T-shirt that declares, "Diversity is a genocidal scam," as one anti-Temple protestor does. But then again, the celebration of diversity is one of the Temple's fundamental elements. As one fellow says, aghast at how he sees Satanists being portrayed and talked about, "Is this how everyone who is different is treated?" He's got a point, and anyone on the wrong end of that treatment – due to gender, race, sexuality, or gender identity – could probably assure him that, yes, this sort of scapegoating and hatred is pretty standard.

The documentary finds it footing, and its narrative center, when the Temple of Satan becomes embroiled in a challenge to the efforts of a preacher and Arkansas state senator Jason Rapert, who championed a bill to erect a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Arkansas state house. The Arkansas state constitution forbids any legal preference of one religion over another, and it would seem a sure thing when the Temple sets out to have its own statue – a "Baphomet," depicting a goat-headed deity with decidedly Luciferian qualities – put there, as well, in a display of America's spiritualistic pluralism. Only, things are not quite so simple as that. They seldom are.

The film dips its toes into other hot-water controversies, including a Black Mass that was supposed to have happened at Harvard University in 2014. The Boston Archdiocese of the Catholic Church responded in force to that – and the Temple's membership have some pretty stringent opinions about the irony of a church that perpetrated decades of child molestation putting on a Holier Than Thou air over what is essentially an exercise of free speech as well as freedom of worship at an American institute of higher education. You know, the sort of thing that a recent executive order from the president himself now mandates, with the loss of federal funding a threat to those colleges that don't comply. Somehow, one doubts that the application of such policies will be any more even handed going forward than they have ever been.

The doc also explores, at least lightly, how the United States became such an overtly "Christian" nation (it started, or at least took off, in the 1950s as a Cold War response to communism's atheistic stance; both "In God We Trust" and "One Nation Under God" originated in that red-scared decade) and Satanism in particular was demonized, if you will, during the "Satanic panic" of the 1980s and 1990s, when law enforcement hallucinated a threat in the form of nonexistent devil-worshipping cults that were supposedly abusing small children.

In another passage, the Temple of Satan's leadership has qualms regarding the loose cannon antics of a chapter leader; though the faith stands for "rebellion" against oppressive and restrictive authority, it has to clamp down with some authority of its own in response.

But meander as the film may through such fertile topics, it really gels when it returns to the Temple standing up to Rapert.

For instance: What happens when a 10 Commandments monument is knocked down by someone utterly unaffiliated with the Satanic Temple because, while a Christian, he fervently believes in the separation of church and state? Rapert promptly lays the blame at the Temple's cloven feet, declaring the faith to be responsible (even though it is not) because, he says, its message "would cause unstable people to get out and carry out these acts." Rapert adds the rhetorical question, "What culpability do they have?" It's a sure bet Rapert keeps that argument wrapped up tight in a desk drawer when it comes to anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, or gun control legislation, or white supremacist hate speech.

Baphomets and spokespeople wearing horn�d masks aside, what might on the surface seem like little more than japes designed to draw attention – or, as one protestor puts it, "irritate people" – turns out to have some serious ethical substance. What does the freedom of religion actually mean, if we're not free to worship as we believe – or even see fit, at the end of a highly intellectual, if not traditionally spiritual, process?