Satanic Temple says IRS recognizes it as a church

The Satanic Temple building on Bridge Street in Salem. The Satanic Temple

The Satanic Temple in Salem announced that it’s been officially recognized as a church by the Internal Revenue Service.

The organization recently posted the announcement on its website and social media.

“The Satanic Temple recently received notice from the IRS affirming our status,” the organization wrote on Instagram on Wednesday.

With the status, the group would join the ranks of tax-exempt organizations. “This acknowledgement will help make sure the Satanic Temple has the same access to public spaces as other religious organizations, affirm our standing in court when battling religious discrimination and enable us to apply for faith-based government grants.”

When it first made the announcement, the Satanic Temple initially claimed to be the first satanic organization to receive this designation from the US federal government. But as a recent Rolling Stone story pointed out, IRS records show that a New York chapter of the Church of Satan was classified as a religious organization in 1980.

“We were under the impression that we were the first because the Church of Satan maintained, publicly, that they never sought tax exemption as part of a principled stand against religious privilege,” said Lucien Greaves, who cofounded the Satanic Temple in 2013.

The Satanic Temple has no ties to the Church of Satan, and its members do not worship the devil; in fact, they don’t believe in the existence of sSatan or the supernatural, according to the temple website.

The Satanic Temple’s mission, as explained on the website, is to “encourage benevolence and empathy among all people, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense and justice, and be directed by the human conscience to undertake noble pursuits guided by the individual will.”

The Satanic Temple is based in Salem, and a Victorian home at 64 Bridge St. serves as its headquarters.

Greaves said he’s pleased that the Satanic Temple has gained federal recognition as a church. “We feel that accepting religious tax exemption — rather than renouncing in protest — can help us to better assert our claims to equal access and exemption while laying to rest any suspicion that we don’t meet the qualifications of a true religious organization,” Greaves said.

“As ‘the religious’ are increasingly gaining ground as a privileged class, we must ensure that this privilege is available to all, and that superstition doesn’t gain exclusive rights over non-theistic religions.”