Fighting Satan for Fame, Fortune, and Jesus, Or Something

Satanic Temple of Iowa display at the Iowa Capitol. Screengrab from KCCI TV

It’s called “a work” and in the monetized content world of social and news media, knowing a work when you see one is important for folks concerned about discerning the media they are consuming.

Running a work, rigging something to look organic and real when it is really planned out, has never been easier. Slap the right buzzwords and trending terms on the work, make sure the right networks and backchannels of like-minded or mutually invested parties boost it, and voila instant viral, trending, monetizable content that gets attention on the principals involved.

Like this here situation, as told by the Des Moines Register:

A former congressional candidate from Mississippi has been charged with allegedly vandalizing the Satanic Temple of Iowa’s statue depicting the pagan idol Baphomet at the Iowa State Capitol.

Michael Cassidy, 35, of Lauderdale, Mississippi…

Hold on, we interrupt this block quote to highlight an important part of the story here. If you aren’t familiar with the geographical difference between Lauderdale, Mississippi and the capital of the great state of Iowa, suffice to say you don’t get from one to the other by accident.

Anywho:

Michael Cassidy, 35, of Lauderdale, Mississippi, was charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief on Thursday, according to the Iowa Department of Public Safety. The charge could carry one year in prison and a $2,560 fine.

The Satanic Temple of Iowa had announced on Facebook its display had been “destroyed beyond repair.”

…

Newsweek reported a crowdfunding campaign was launched for Cassidy’s legal fund, which raised its target of $20,000. Some donors included conservative campaign group Turning Point USA, which gave $10,000.

Cassidy posted on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, thanking people for their support. He said the campaign raised enough money “in just a couple hours.” DeSantis said on X he would contribute to the campaign.

He defended the attack and criticized those who, while saying they found the display offensive, took the position that it was permitted as an exercise of free speech.

“To Christians who defend Satanic altars when they speak with their church, family, friends, coworkers, or on @X: Would you use the same argument if you were speaking with God? Think on that,” he wrote.

Cassidy ran for the Mississippi 3rd Congressional District in 2022, losing against incumbent Republican Michael Guest. On his LinkedIn page, he lists himself as a former active duty Navy pilot, now a Naval reservist, and a civilian test pilot. A native of Virginia, he says he has a bachelor’s degree in history from Virginia Tech and a master’s in liberal arts from Harvard University’s extension service, with a focus on government.

A quick gander at social media shows a bunch of folks promoting said crowd fundraising, including presidential candidate and current Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Fighting Satan is easy, natural, a no-brainer, especially if you come from a Christian background or share that faith. Who could possibly be against fighting Satan?

See, that’s how the work starts. Set up the mark to where they not only will agree with you, but won’t even dare disagree with the premise.

Here’s one of the tells this savaging of the Satan statue story is a work, besides remixing yet another round of “Satanic Panic!!!” All those mostly aligned accounts, websites, and outlets praising Cassidy lead off their social media postings with some variations of “Christian Veteran tears down Satan.” Christian. Veteran. Satan. Buzzwords! SEO!¹

Leading off the story with “failed congressional candidate from Mississippi” just doesn’t hit the right buttons, you see. The framing changes, the questions start to form, the righteous outrage isn’t as clean and pure and all Deus Vult-y-ish. “Christian Veteran” ripping the head off Satan gets the outrage machine going. Failed pol still harboring ambitions whose Twitter handle is “voteCassidy” taking a road trip to get national attention does not hit the same.

Of course, not praising the Christian Veteran Satan Decapitator for the mighty blow of destroying an inanimate object — purposefully put there to get some Christian to overreact to it — will bring accusations of heresy. If you don’t boost the social media fundraising and profile enhancement of the Slayer of Iowa you love Satan, hate God, despise babies, loathe apple pie, despise America, wokey woke, communist, this, that, or the other. The same group of folks who automatically give their full faith and social media credit to anything with the right “God Wills It!” leadoff will instantly pass judgment on such devilishly discerning of what is actually going on.

Real Christians believe everything the Real Christian websites, social media accounts, and outlets tell them, don’t you know. Jesus really wants you to make money from content about how Real Christians are taking the fight to Satan statues in Iowa in preparation for whatever the next step up the interwebs ladder of fame and fortune the neo-crusaders are crusading for.

“Blessed are the networked content creators and those who unswervingly support them, for they will inherit the clicks,” – Book of Hezekiah 5:56.²

The faith healers and prosperity gospel folks figured out somewhere along the way a better path. That if they merged their ability to dazzle their gullible and generous audiences with the growing political power of right-wing and conservative politics of their former theological enemies like Falwell’s Moral Majority and like movements there was audience capture potential. Tap the whole thing in the “church growth” evangelical movement of the 90s-2000s that focused the evangelical faith into a monetized and consolidated subculture for the American middle-to-upper middle class with their faithful disposable income to support it all, and the stage was set for the political changes of the last 10-15 years. One politized faith to rule them all, and social media/new media to bind them. Political Power. Income Streams. Self-sustaining. Immune from all outside criticism, critique, or course correction. Flags and Bibles leading the way, and if you don’t support someone wrapped in both beheading a bodacious Baphomet then you aren’t for either, you un-American Satan lover, you.

And folks wonder why American evangelical church attendance is down. Aside from the mixing of theology and politics, and the increasingly insular nature of many evangelical circles, and the mass move to generic worship services, who wants to fellowship with a bunch of suckers who can’t see they are the marks to obviously made-for-internet productions of socio-political theater? An unbelieving world finds such things from professing Christians unbelievable, adding them to the list of candidates supported and behaviors endorsed that run contrary to the 2,000 plus years of Christian teachings readily known to the world. And I don’t blame them a bit.

Meanwhile, Michael Cassidy will become the hero of the day to the in-group he is trying to court, raise a bunch of money, and will spin it all to whatever he decides to do after he pays his maximum potential fine of $2,560. Cassidy posted on his social media that “All donations in excess of what is directly related to my defense shall be donated to a Christian legal fund” for what that is worth. Pretty good return on investment since as of this writing he’s raised over $30K plus the invaluable free media for an ambitious person.

I will declare my own bias here. I come from the land of small churches, bivocational pastors — if they were paid at all — and hills and hollars where being faithful didn’t have much money in it. Just folks who claimed to be people of faith taking care of each other as best they could. Nationalized politics has started to change that all over, and technology means no community or place of worship is untouched. The accusation of sheltered is harsh, but has validity. Very few folks had such a privileged base to grow from. Still, I’m thankful to have experienced it, and having that filter of a servant-based faith that the Cassidys of the world can’t pass through, or won’t pass through since there isn’t fame and fortune in it.

Experience such as this allows the noise of the outlets, social media accounts, and websites trying to dictate what is and isn’t of God to fade into the distance. “Be still, and know I am God”³ while the next two lines are about God being exalted among the nations and the earth — while little old you, me, us, is still — would work just fine if folks would try it. It just doesn’t trend well, that whole “being still” thing. Hard to get engagement and fundraising like that. Easy to get online criticisms from the buzzword crowd that want lots and lots of works exactly how they want such works to prove out someone else’s salvation.

I’m good with being still and not asking “how high” when the online Real Christians demand “jump if you love Jesus” and no Satan statue, social media pile-on, or Christo-politico grifter can move me.

1. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, the method/process of improving a website’s search engine visibility, for those of you from Logan.
2. This is not a real book of the Bible, for those of you that are not up on your Scriptures
3. This one is actually a Bible verse, Psalms 46:10 to be exact