Abstract
Background
The Church of Satan, the seminal example of organizational Satanism, was founded in 1966. During the 1970s, the Church of Satan was wracked by a history of numerous schisms. Despite the notoriety of Satanism in popular culture, few scholars have analyzed the Church of Satan as a religious organization. Furthermore, not many scholars have directly discussed the schisms that it has undergone.
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to analyze the Church of Satan, an understudied case in American religious organizational history, and its schisms. A theoretical framework based on religious economies and organizational ecology is introduced to account for schism in Satanism, which hitherto has been dominated by European cultural milieu arguments.
Methods
A historical case study is performed on the case of the Church of Satan, using primary and secondary documentation, in order to address four theoretical propositions.
Results
Findings demonstrate costliness, authority, doctrine, and niche/environment were all potential causes for the schisms that impacted the Church of Satan.
Conclusions and Implications
The Church of Satan conforms to religious economies and organizational ecology theory expectations of schism. Further research is needed to understand organizational aspects of Satanism and other avant garde religious groups.
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Notes
Focus on worldly possession refers to “professional services, funds, real estate, objects of value, etc., which contribute to the tangible, worldly success of the Church of Satan are qualification for elevation to both II ° and III °” (Diane LaVey in Aquino 2002, 407).
Aquino disliked LaVey’s move from “authenticity” to “surface imagery” (Aquino 2002, 336).
The majority of CoS members today seem to share this mentality. Barton herself explained: “One key to the staying power of the Church of Satan is the fact that Anton LaVey structured his organization as a dictatorship. The leader has supreme power. Though the Council of Nine is essential to the organization, the leader (in our case, the High Priest) has no legal or ethical constraints to follow their advice. There is no committee or board of directors to answer to, nor any legal responsibility to run vital decisions through trustees for approval…LaVey knew the pitfalls of ruling by committee- how slow and cumbersome it could be, and how, like grottos, it can lead to ego conflicts, political posturing, and power wrangling. Of course, since LaVey was protecting his own legacy, he was a benevolent and wise dictator, as his successors have been. The members of the Church of Satan have had absolute trust in our leaders’ judgement and integrity, and have not been disappointed” (Barton 2021, 319–20).
The sale and gifting of priesthoods was not common, only really in cases of family friends (like the aforementioned chauffeur) and Sammy Davis Jr. LaVey specifically started pushing for a centralization of a trained and formalized priesthood, which had been up to this point appointed more informally and democratically (if the majority of key members of CoS approved of the elevation of a member to priesthood, it was typically done with LaVey having the final say). LaVey started developing purely administrative or bureaucratized priesthoods, and additionally created a regimented training program in occultic/satanic practices held only at the central grotto under LaVey. The new priesthood was thus expected to either have had this training or demonstrate a command of both satanic materials and occult ritual knowledge through testing.
This claim of orthodoxy is controversial within Satanism. Many modern Satanists view the current CoS negatively in comparison to the original Church under LaVey’s leadership due to Gilmore’s frequent attacks on other Satanists/groups, calling them “pseudo-Satanists” (see also Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen 2015).
LaVey was also at the time hit with both physical and mental illness, likely caused due to his public split with Aquino, shrinking membership, and a bitter marital dispute with his companion, Diane Hegarty, which would later culminate in a legal dispute (Barton 2021, 162, 243, 230). Flowers attributes this removal from public life to the split with Aquino: “This event [the schism with Aquino] brought an end to the wider experiment known as the Church of Satan- as it, and its leader, returned to the reclusive existence deep within the recesses of the Black House…Post-1975 accounts of the Church and LaVey emphasized the idea that the organization had ‘gone underground’ or entered a ‘second phase’, but continued to be strong. Little more was heard of LaVey on the public scene until the mid-1980’s.” (Flowers 1997, 178, brackets added, quotes original). Barton attributes this removal to three very different reasons: to make LaVey available to law enforcement, to focus on reaching people more acclimated to his beliefs, and to focus on writing and composing for existing members (Barton 2021, 177–178).
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Acknowledgements
My thanks to Kevin Dougherty, Gordon Melton, Paul Froese, Jason Burtt, and Christopher Pieper for their assistance with this project. Finally, I am grateful to my anonymous peer reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions.
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Foertsch, S. An Organizational Analysis of the Schismatic Church of Satan. Rev Relig Res 64, 55–76 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-021-00468-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-021-00468-9