Podcasts/Sacred Tension-ST Ministers of Satan8vilo

ST_Ministers_of_Satan8vilo SUMMARY KEYWORDS ordination, people, ministers, satanic temple, ordained, satanic, ordained minister, question, community, ritual, tst, coursework, weddings, lessons, satanist, marriage, religious traditions, program, perform, require SPEAKERS Greg Stevens, Stephen Bradford Long

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Stephen Bradford Long 01:18 This is sacred tension, the podcast about the discipline of asking questions. My name is Steven Bradford long and we are here on the rock candy Podcast Network. For more shows like this one, go to rock candy recordings.com In this episode, I speak with Pena Mouw, Director of ministry for the Satanic Temple. We talk about the temples, new ordination program, and all the ins and outs and we take questions from the satanic community about that process. But before we get to the conversation, I have to thank my patrons. As always, my patrons are my personal Lord and Savior's. And I truly could not do this without them for this episode, I have to thank will and Steven, thank you so much. I truly could not do this without you, and you are ensuring the long life of my work. If you're interested in joining their number, please go to patreon.com forward slash Steven Bradford long. You can also follow the link in the show notes. As always, please subscribe wherever you're listening to this. And if you're listening on Apple podcasts, please take a moment to leave a five star review. You can always find me at Steven Bradford long.com. And you can email me via the contact page. I love hearing back from my audience. All right. Well, with all of that finally out of the way I am delighted to bring you my conversation with Penemue. Penemue, welcome back to the show.

Greg Stevens 02:55 Thank you very much for having me on.

Stephen Bradford Long 02:57 So I think you are now the most interviewed guest on sacred tension. You're you've become a regular you're like up there with Joseph Laycock and Lucien Greaves as the most regular guest on sacred tension.

Greg Stevens 03:12 Well, I am honored and I enjoy being here. So I appreciate it.

Stephen Bradford Long 03:16 So there's a lot of excitement in the Satanic Temple community, which of course, is our religious community about the upcoming ordination program, which you are the director of, you're the director of ministry for the Satanic Temple. And so I just wanted to do this episode is kind of an update on that process. Where are you and where is the ordination process in terms of coming out to the Satanic Temple going public? Also, I should preface this whole conversation by saying that I am not an impartial interviewer. Here I am part of the ordination Council, which is kind of helping to get this program off the ground. So I work with you quite a bit on on ordination stuff. So just so the audience knows that I am not impartial here.

Greg Stevens 04:13 Absolutely. And yeah, this thing has been a it's been a long time coming in. It's been something that people have been hearing about and that I've been working on for more than a year. And of course, it was an idea that you know, was people were were talking about even prior to when I got started. So where we are now is we are in the final stages of finishing up the coursework part. So you know, the program has 10 lessons which have the form of video presentations, sometimes some reading material, and it goes through different topics on history of Satanism philosophy of Satanism philosophy of TST some specific sort of topics like the Satanic Panic, and we have developed assessments, they're going to be little quizzes, there's going to be a final exam. And then after the coursework, the coursework part is the bulk of the program. But then in order to become ordained, you know, there are these other steps. And so we've also been putting together some of the, you know, final steps that are going to be needed to actually become ordained. And all of this information is on satanic ministry.com. So all of the, you know, if anyone is interested in hearing more about what the actual requirements are, and some of those details, it's all public now at satanic ministry.com. And so yeah, wherever it's a point where within the next, within the next I would say, a week or two, we're going to be doing a gradual rollout for testing, you know, there's going to be initially a small set of people, people who were in leadership, people who are like, you know, the people who actually presented the lessons are going to get a first crack right at testing the thing out, and then it's going to be expanded after that, and then eventually to Chapter heads, but we're just about to start this initial testing, which I'm really excited about, and get people started on it. Because then the next stage, for me and for our team, once the once the main course is set up and and functioning and running, is going to be to continue to put effort in developing further, what are the resources that we are providing to ministers, once they're ordained, and that's going to be, you know, we're collecting, we're already in the process of collecting some resources, like we're gonna have a ritual archive with a bunch of essays about thinking about satanic ritual and a bunch of ritual scripts from different sources, as well as information to help ministers who wants to perform weddings, for example, you know, a lot of people haven't done that before, especially if they're being ordained for the first time. So a nice handy little script and I step by step guides that people can follow, if they you know, if a friend of theirs asks them to perform their wedding as a satanic minister, and all that sort of stuff is going to be the next step as well. But I am very excited about the fact that we are on the cusp of being about to begin the slow, you know, initial testing rollout of the program itself

Stephen Bradford Long 07:30 perfect. So I got a lot of questions from listeners and members of the satanic community who are interested in the details of this program. So let's just go ahead and move on to questions. And hopefully through the process of answering and discussing these questions, we can get more into like the meat of the what and the why of this program is so I sent you the form of all the questions. Is there one particular question that you'd be interested in tackling first?

Greg Stevens 07:57 I mean, we can we can go through that. Suppose you just from top to bottom discretion, all right, you are like if there's one of your favorites, and I'm open to

Stephen Bradford Long 08:06 that. So so one of my favorites actually is more of a philosophical question. And this comes from a minister actually a Christian minister on my Discord server, who asks ordination implies a hierarchy. Is this an issue for tst? So this is actually a question that has come up a lot for me, not necessarily for people within tea. Well, maybe for some people within TST, but especially for people on the outside of TST, where they seem to think that the Satanic Temple having ministers is somehow like fun, just somehow fundamentally clashes with what it means to be a Satanist. And I think part of that is what Joseph Laycock calls ignorant familiarity. You know, this idea that people who aren't very acquainted with Satanism have think they know everything there is to know about Satanism. But I think that it's an interesting question. So what's your answer to that?

Greg Stevens 09:00 No, it is interesting. And I can, I can even be a little sympathetic, you know, and understand the people who might, you know, have a concern about that, because when we look out in the world, at the way, you know, clergy ministry and ordination are, you know, the way those things manifest in different religious traditions, there are religions where it is that right there are religions where that's how they approach it and if you are deemed, then it means you have power over the people or whatever and there are different levels or different whatever. So I, you know, I can understand I can understand how that question would come up. But with the way this question is phrased, it says it states ordination implies hierarchy. And that's the premise that I would absolutely sort of push back on because, like, originally, it first of all, even outside of Satanism, in other religious traditions, it doesn't always, you know, you can think of clergy like you know, a very higher Arkel, I guess what comes to mind, for me is like the stereotypical sort of Catholic picture of, you know, all the ranks of various power levels in clergy. But there are other religious traditions where, you know, ministers are just people, and they might be, you know, they might be a sinner, and two, they might not even be, you know, in a particular place, you know, in charge of a particular parish or whatever they might just be people who go and care for people in the community. Although ministers, the idea of a minister can mean many different things. One of the common themes across most, if not all religious traditions that have ordination and ministry, is that they, you know, care for the religious community in one way or another. And so the vision of you know, what ordination can mean, for a in a satanic context is something that I actually have an entire hour long lesson that I present in the coursework. So keep an eye out for that. But, but it's it is fundamentally different from having a structural relationship, like in the standard corporate org charts sense, right? It's not, it's simply isn't that kind of thing. Now, the other funny thing about this question is we do have like CSD already has, their chapter has, and there are these other sorts of different positions that, you know, there's already some organizational hierarchy, and a lot of chapters have their own internal councils that are in charge of certain things. And so to a certain extent, organizations that want to, you know, get stuff done, often have structure to them. And CSC does have some of that, if that's what if that's what's being implied by the word hierarchy here, ordination isn't part of that, per se, I think it's important that we are intending to acquire over time, we are intending to require people who are in leadership to become ordained. But not everyone who's ordained, you know, is in leadership, it doesn't go in that direction. And so simply, the fact of being ordained is separate. It's completely independent of whether or not a person has a leadership role. From a, like I said, an org chart kind of perspective.

Stephen Bradford Long 12:23 So what I'm hearing you say is that being ordained does not grant you automatic organizational leadership within the temple? That's correct. Yeah, great. But everyone in organizational leadership will be required to be ordained. And that's really kind of the way it is, you know, that that, like rhymes with my experience and other religious traditions. And as you were talking, I was just thinking, you know, regarding the concerns surrounding satanic ministers, I am very pro minister, Pro, the concept of Pastor Pro, the concept of Minister because I feel like, while it is often a setup for lots of abuse, and that has to do with certain religious structures that enable that abuse, when it works, I think it's incredibly important and societally valuable, and, and because a pastor, a minister is someone whose duty is to care for the community, to be there, when someone needs help to talk someone down from a ledge in a purely non therapeutic non counseling setting, to, to be a good friend, to be a wise friend to the community. And I just don't think that as we've gone through the secularization of our culture, that there's a, that there was a good secular analog for or a good secular version of that. I don't know how well, the concept of pastor has translated into a secular setting. And so or into a non theistic setting, and so I see TST filling in its own small way, that kind of societal need of offering pastors in a setting where because of the the positive growth of secularization, we don't necessarily have that. I just wonder what your thoughts are on that. No, I

Greg Stevens 14:19 agree with that. And I think that I think that even just thinking within our own community in the Satanic Temple, the idea of leaders being ordained, and getting some exposure to you know, this kind of Rose way of thinking about being a leader in a community, not in the, you know, sense of being organizational power and telling people what to do, but in the sense of being an inspiration being a sort of caregiver for the community. Like that's something that I think is has been missing as US sort of overall thing in our community. Of course, there are people who do it, of course, but as something that we as a community strive for, it's been missing. And I think that it is very much in line with other sort of changes that we're working towards, in, you know, focusing the idea of congregations, chapters, being thought of as congregations and making a shift towards saying, you know, these are really about nurturing communities. So all of this is part of what I see as the mindset that goes along with the concept of, you know, introducing the idea of ministers being a part of how our communities

Stephen Bradford Long 15:44 operate. Perfect. So I have one question specifically about leaders being ordained, being expected to be ordained, required to be ordained one person on Discord asks, I've heard that new chapter heads will be required to be ordained, Won't this create a barrier for entry for new chapters and slow growth? For tst? What's your response to that? Yes. Yes, that's a good thing.

Greg Stevens 16:12 I mean, so So Right. That's the, I think the, I think the, you know, when I look back on the last six years, six or seven years, and the all the things that we've tried in this organization, and having gone through, you know, phases where we really were, let's, you know, lower the barrier to entry, we want everybody to, you know, be have an opportunity, and we don't want to be gatekeepers. And we went through that at, you know, at different phases in our development very early on with the first sort of emergence of chapters. And then we sort of went through that, again, at different periods, it has created problems, that just because we ended up getting people who are not necessarily connected to the, you know, the values and the mission of the Satanic Temple ending up in leadership, when you lower the barrier to entry too much, right. And that has created all kinds of other issues as well. And I think that, I think that, you know, not every single member is going to be required to be ordained, of course, and so we're not really interested in, you know, gate gatekeeping, like, who gets to call themselves a Satanist or whatever, right? That's not, that's not what we're talking about here. It really is just a matter of trying to think carefully about what qualities and what basis of you know, what foundation of knowledge and mindset we are looking for in the people who are going to be leaders, and in charge of, you know, really nurturing our communities. And so if you know, this is a kind of barrier to entry, then I think the deaths not necessarily bad, however, I will, there's another way I want to answer this to, like, gosh, we are taking part of the reason that we're rolling this out as a testing period, initially, is that we really are, I really am, I will speak for myself very interested in making sure that it is, you know, for, if we're going to be having this barrier to entry, it's going to be because we want people to have a shared understanding of Satanism, a shared understanding of TST, it doesn't mean we want everyone to have exactly the same values, or exactly the same goals. Not everybody has to agree on all these, you know, some set of issues. It's more about making sure that people have an understanding of the roots and the history, what the philosophical origins of why the Satanic Temple as an organization, approaches things the way that it does. And if you have your own personal philosophical disagreements with parts of that, then that's fine. You know, if there are many different ways to agree with the seven tenants as I think, you know, a lot any anyone in the Satanic Temple, you know, knows this is one of the favorite topics, right of discussion among members, there are many different ways to follow the seven tenets and with ordination. You know, it's I want to make sure that if people are if people are feeling like you know, there's a there's a there's a filter, they're keeping them out. It's not because of you know, it's not because they happen to have some particular interpretation of seven tennis to disagrees with someone else. It's not because the coursework itself is creating a barrier. It's not because of, you know, their specific accessibility needs or anything like that. Like we want to make this as open and accessible as an opportunity to, to learn and then at For that, when we worked really hard to have that be the way we're conducting the program, the only real barrier to entry is, do you want to learn it or not? Right? And that's what I would like to have be the goal.

Stephen Bradford Long 20:12 Yeah, that makes complete sense. So to recap, you, you won't be denied entry into ordination, on the basis that you interpret the seven tenets to support, you know, anarchism versus liberalism, you will be denied entry on the basis of you not actually being a Satanist, or something like that.

Greg Stevens 20:36 Exactly like, like, in fact, there's just a part in one of the lessons where it actually comes up several times, you know, just mentioning, the, there are certain things where, you know, we might describe some aspect of the philosophy of, of, you know, the, the is driving some of the political actions of the Satanic Temple, but taking care to say, you know, if there are details of you know, where this philosophy came from, do you disagree with? That's, you know, that's fine. You know, there's the or

Stephen Bradford Long 21:09 less agree with Lucians Twitterfeed. Yes, in other words,

Greg Stevens 21:16 and so, in fact, I think there's a place in, in, in the first lesson, if I remember correctly, where I mentioned that even saying, even even when Lucien has said things, like, you know, we in the Satanic Temple are inspired by, you know, enlightenment era, revolutionary philosophy. And, you know, if you, if you even if you take that as a given, once you dig into what, you know what that means, like, that doesn't imply even any specific political, those people were all over the place, like they had all different all kinds of different philosophical stances interests of politics.

Stephen Bradford Long 21:52 Martha was an enlightenment thinker. Yes.

Greg Stevens 21:55 And so, there's so like, a Yeah, like, that's that? Yeah, I guess, again, you know, when it comes to when it comes to barriers to entry, or, or kicking people out, like you, you're going to have to be a Satanist, you're going to have to be able to say that you agree with the seven tenets, however you interpret them, you know, you if you're, you know, you're not going to be able to be ordained by the Satanic Temple, if you are a theistic Satanist. And so there are some basic things like that. But beyond that, you know, this isn't. This isn't meant to be something that all of a sudden adds, you know, constraints on, on the bliss of people within the Satanic Temple. We are, we are overflowing with different perspectives on the Satanic Temple, and I love it. And this program is of no way meant to change that.

Stephen Bradford Long 22:51 Yeah. So there's a point here that I want to highlight, which is that there's a lot of ideological diversity within the temple. And we expect that to also be the case within our clergy. And that's good. Because, you know, my personal bias is that that kind of diversity brings a and kind of the the kindly friction that takes place within that diversity creates a level of vitality, that's really extraordinary. And so we want to maintain that we don't want to get rid of that that's a healthy thing. People having, you know, long conversations till 3am, sometimes arguments about, you know, the interpretation of tenet five, that's a good thing. That's what makes the that's one of the many things that makes the temple exciting. And so that will still be there is what I'm hearing you say?

Greg Stevens 23:50 Absolutely. I absolutely agree with all of that.

Stephen Bradford Long 23:53 Great. So another question that I got was, has more to do with the role of the minister once they are ordained ash on Twitter asks, What does a minister's job look like within the Satanic Temple? As well as what scenarios are you anticipating to meet in deal with as a minister? Wow,

Greg Stevens 24:14 I mean, that's a big question. It is, it's a big, huge lesson. 10 So if you go to satanic ministry.com, you can find a place where you can see the sort of outline of the curriculum. And in my lessons that I present are lessons one and 10 sort of the intro and the conclusion as it were, and in lesson 10, like that, that lesson is about what does it mean to be a satanic minister? What does it mean to be Minister specifically within the Satanic Temple? And the fact that it will mean different things to different people and that's okay, so like, you know, what does it look like ministers within the Satanic Temple will be off To rise to perform religious rituals. And so that is going to be one part of it. This is also one of the reasons or it's a contributing factor to why we would like all of our leadership to be ordained, because, you know, we want to make sure that all of our leadership, when they want to organize a, you know, a congregation wide ritual event, we are as a group going to put on in, you know, in a black mass or, or an baptism for the whole group or whatever it is being able to be authorized to do rituals as part of what being an ordained minister is going to be. And so we want to make sure that, you know, all of our leaders have the background, to be able to know exactly, you know, what that means, and what and to have some guidance on that. So part of it is, rituals. Another part of it is a you alluded to this, Steven, the caring for the community, right, one of the roles, the ministers are often called on in, across across different religious traditions is to care for well, in the way that it is described in other illustrations, often to care for the spiritual health of the community. And like, you know, as a Satanist, I'm like, let's try to see them come up with another word for that, maybe, although, I mean, that's, you know, depending on how you interpret the word spiritual, but, you know, whatever word is used that idea, right, that idea of being able to foster, you know, positivity, and sort of Empower, and nurture, you know, our, our satanic communities that we care about so much. And so that is, I guess, rituals, and that those are two big parts of it. But like I said, there's going to be a whole lesson on this. So check it out. But, but I guess like it for a quick answer, that is the way I would have to I would have to answer it perfect.

Stephen Bradford Long 27:10 Yeah. We're trying really, really hard in this interview to not give spoilers.

Greg Stevens 27:17 Well, it is that so. But it's also just another thing that I figured might as well say is it's not I mean, yes, boiler is a little bit, but I feel like because it is complex. Yeah, I spent, I spend an entire hour as well. So one subsection of the hour long lesson, there's 120 minutes section, where I really go into this in detail. And I spend a lot of time listening through different types of things that ministers are often called upon to do in our broader culture, and how that might manifest in our satanic community. But for like, but multiple times in there, I say, hey, this might not be an aspect of what you are interested in duties, Mr. And that's okay. Right. And so there's a lot of time spent on that. And so I am a little bit like, I don't want to go down the path of trying to give the quick summary, because I'm a little worried that like, the quick summary, could give a mistaken impression of like, what either is going to be required, or what isn't, you know, so that's part of the reason that I'm hedging a little bit, is because it is a legit complicated question. And I don't want anyone listening to this, to come away with a mistaken impression by getting, you know, just enough information to be more confused, I guess.

Stephen Bradford Long 28:39 Moral of the story. If you're really curious about this, you should take the ordination program. Okay. Here's, here's another question. How much oversight does the ministry intend to have over ministers by ministry? I assume they mean, the Satanic Temple.

Greg Stevens 28:56 Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'm oversight. The main place where I see there being oversight, per se, is when it comes to because there is going to be, there is going to be a process of any time that an ordained minister wants to perform a ritual, you know, it's something that isn't like you sitting alone at your altar and doing it right. Something that's, you know, more public than that. But anytime an ordained minister is going to perform a religious ritual, you know, as an ordained minister of GST, you're gonna have to register your intent to perform the ritual by going on to the the satanic Ministry website, and filling out a ritual notification form. I call it a ritual notification form rather than a like proposal or request or whatever. Because I really expect most of these are going to be you know, nothing. Most of these are going to be very, very basic. And so, you know, if it's, if it's relatively small, if it's only you know, members only if it doesn't have any sort of bloodletting or crazy or whatever stuff, then I'm just lazy, I don't want to have to reply to all those. So it's a notification form, if you don't hear back from someone, but in the next you know, three days, then just assume it's approved. But it is an opportunity for, you know, if there is something that's going to be a larger event, if you get something that might freak some sort of risk, or it is something that might get media attention, it is an opportunity to, you know, engage in a conversation and get some, you know, and get some, I guess, oversight, but more just, you know, an opportunity to open up that conversation. And, and sort of, you know, work together to make sure that, you know, everything has been sort of appropriately thought of, you know, get the right insurance or whatever it is,

Stephen Bradford Long 30:43 you're going to be doing that, you know, suspension fisting bloodletting orgy, you need to make sure the insurance is lined up, you need

Greg Stevens 30:52 to make sure that the venue allows it, you need to make sure that you have consent forms from everybody, like, you know, there are things and so it's, and then also, another purpose of that ritual notification form is, if it is a ritual, rather than one of our internal rituals, if it is something like a wedding, like they're actually legal requirements for, you know, record keeping in that case. So we're, you're going to have to fill out a specific information. And that way, if there's some sort of legal request down the road, or some kind of challenge in court, you know, we can produce a list of every wedding that you or any of our ministers have ever performed. And that's, you know, that's for legal purposes. And in the end, you know, it's like this, this, that kind of oversight is going to be it's there for, you know, like I said, I intended to be not, you know, burdensome, especially for some of the simple things, some of the rituals that aren't, you know, don't have a lot of exposure or risks, you should still fill it out for if for no other reason that it's really nice to be able to have some record, no matter how little information is there of how often rituals are, are being done, you know, even if they are small rituals, that kind of thing, can even that kind of record keeping, can even sometimes, you know, could potentially make a difference to be able to speak to it in the media or in court, we're always being questioned about whether we're real religion or not being able to say, Yeah, you know, we have ritual practice and in our community, these are the number of times that the, you know, in the year that our members engage in religious ritual. So it's partially oversight and partially just record keeping. But that ritual notification form is the main thing that comes to mind when I think of the word oversight. So I don't know, I hope I'm not. I don't know if there are other aspects that the person who asked this might have intended. But that's the main one that comes to mind.

Stephen Bradford Long 32:54 Another aspect of oversight could be disqualified, what what disqualifies you from being a minister? So say, someone goes through the basic process goes through the course has the background check has a letter of recommendation from em, or a chapter head from executive ministry, or the chapter had all these details, by the way, dear listeners are on the website, I highly recommend everyone go to satanic ministry.com. All of the details of the basic process of getting ordained are there. So let's say someone completes that process. What, once they are ordained, could get them disqualified from being ordained,

Greg Stevens 33:38 breaking the code of conduct, if we find out the you are harassing people, or threatening people or doing stuff like that, when you register as a candidate to become ordained, there are certain things that you in the act of registering, you have to agree, by registering, you agree that blah, blah, blah, and that includes things like, you're a Satanist, you're a member of the Satanic Temple, you agree with the seven tenants, you know, and if it turns out that one or more of those is not true, and we only find out afterwards, your ordination could be revoked performing a ritual that, you know, is where you didn't submit the form. And this is one of those things. It's like, in most cases, it's you know, first of all, if it's a small thing, as a practical matter, would we even find out, but if we do find out, especially if it ends up like it ends up in the news, and it's something that, you know, is demonstrably contrary to what a Satanic Temple Minister should be doing in a ritual or whatever, you know, yeah, you could have your ordination, suspended or revoked for any reasons like that. When we talk about oversight in my mind that is, after the fact stuff, right. That's not something that we're we're not going to be asking people to get permission for every little thing. In some cases we couldn't. But if it turns out that, you know, we find out that there's the you've, you know, done a material breach of the Code of Conduct, then it is possible the ordination could be suspended, or even revoked.

Stephen Bradford Long 35:16 Yeah. So as with all things, tst, you have a lot of leeway to be yourself. But there are there, there are some hard boundaries, all of which are listed on the website.

Greg Stevens 35:28 And actually, I want to make sure another thing is clear, because I just realized this could give the wrong impression I were we the ordination Council, we are not the ones who decide if there has been a material that is important. So I do want to I do want to make clear like, this isn't like some like, we just simply look at something and decide, oh, that seems bad, let's revoke. That's not That's not, that's not either. Surco serene Council, for anyone who's not familiar, is our functioning, essentially, HR department, steering Council is responsible for researching and evaluating complaints that are brought forward about breaches of code of conduct. And so it would be through them, like, our group is not responsible for adjudicating that. But if certain counsel comes to the conclusion that a minister has materially breached the code of conduct, then that could have consequences even separately in the organization, but because they're an ordained minister, and you know, once once as the director of the ministry, you know, I'm notified of that, then it becomes an additional decision, you know, independent of any other consequences that might exist, you know, in their local congregation or anything else, it might also result in consequences for their status as an ordained minister.

Stephen Bradford Long 36:51 Perfect. So here's a big question. And, again, this might be too broad to be helpful. But Z asks, I'd like to know what the vision is long term. What does the TSP community look like 20 years from now? And what's the role of ministers in getting there? So let's try to narrow this question. Some not what is the long term goal or vision for tsp as a whole, but But what are the hopes or long term plans for the ordination program in particular,

Greg Stevens 37:28 so I mean, that's better, that's better. The long term vision for the for to TST community as a whole is that we have a thriving community that that is rooted in satanic principles. Yes, that's, that's like the only you know that, because it's so broad. But for for the ordination programs, so 20 years, I don't know. But I can definitely tell you what I have imagined, of, you know, once we get it rolled down, once we get because we have the initial testing period, then we're going to be getting, you know, all of the chapter heads, you know, through the program, getting feedback from them, so that they can help us improve the program, then there's going to be the next wave of opening up to, you know, official members of chapter is having an opportunity. And there may be future weaves, after that were opens up to the more the broad public during that time, and after that time, I also would like to continue to develop the resources that are available to our ordained ministers. Because, you know, in addition to the core curriculum, that's part of, you know, getting ordained for the first time on an annual basis, ministers will have to renew their ordination, in order to remain active. And it won't require a whole like 10 lesson course each time, but it will require taking a single lesson each year that is going to be they're going to be able to select a an elective from sort of a menu electives are going to focus on sort of more in depth stuff on particular topics that they might be interested in. And that's going to be an ongoing sort of continued education, you know, sort of philosophy and then above and beyond continuing to create a rich, and, you know, broad menu of these elective courses, you know, other materials, if we take seriously the idea that our ordained ministers are going to be, you know, nurturing our communities, and going to be, you know, leaders in the sense of, of, you know, helping to foster our values of Satanists within our community, meaning, empathy and compassion and justice. Then I want to build up a set of resources for helping our ministers and training ministers with stuff like that, too. So we want to provide resources for You know, giving them education, how to listen and, you know, manage when people do come to you to talk about, you know, things that they're going through, you know, active listening, you know, resources to sort of ministers will know how to direct people who might benefit from outside resources, knowing how to direct them, giving, you know, little training, little mini training classes that are ministers can take in anything from recognizing and understanding what sexual harassment is in their communities, so that they can, as leaders can, you know, set the stage so that doesn't happen in their events, understanding how to communicate in a way, that is, you know, aware of things like, you know, what microaggressions are aware of how to how to engage with people, and use appropriate pronouns. And like, I would love to create a whole set of resources that our ministers will have available to them, so they can really, you know, explore and have resources available to, you know, through self guided interest, like nurture their own ability to be compassionate religious leaders within our community. And believe, leaders, again, in the sense of not like the org chart sense, but as people who are nurturing, caring for the, you know, religious, social and emotional health of our community, people who are inspiring and providing comfort, that kind of leader, I want to, I want to build out all of those resources. And I want to build out the, the collection of the ritual archive, a collection of, you know, the scripts for different rituals, essays about, you know, how to think about the creation of satanic rituals by you know, different people who have a lot of experience in that area resources to help people with just the basics of not just, you know, weddings, which is something a lot people understand, but understanding, understanding, grieving, and being, you know, something that people can turn to for funeral ceremonies. And there is a whole wealth of skills and things that our, you know, religious leaders in our ministers can benefit from. And so that's kind of what I think past you know, the initial get the coursework completed, get a debugged, get it, you know, the people get everything sort of started, the next phase, in my mind is absolutely strengthening and deepening what we create the empowers our ministers to just really shine and go to the next level of being able to care for our community.

Stephen Bradford Long 43:00 Perfect. And big picture, I am super excited about the ordination program, because I feel like unleashing this cohort of satanic ministers into our community and into the world can can really deepen and strengthen and vitalize the satanic community in really, really powerful ways. And so my hope is that this this will kind of be an upgrade, it will, it will be like eating a mushroom for this in the Mario since not, not in the psychedelic, maybe in the psychedelic since one never knows. But you know, it'll, it'll be eating the mushroom for the Satanic Temple, and, and will provide a lot more on the ground capacity for building a satanic culture and community. And I think that's just incredibly exciting. And that we're kind of in the early stages of this and that we as a community, and the people who are taking who will take this course who will become ordained. We are taking part in the creation of that, and that is extraordinarily exciting to me. That's what I love so much about being part of a new religious movement. It's like, we all get to shape the religion that we're in, we all get to shape the religion that we want to see in the world. And so to me, it's just amazingly exciting that we're doing this.

Greg Stevens 44:35 So just to clarify, you will not be required to eat mushrooms as part of the ordination program.

Stephen Bradford Long 44:41 However, if you want to incorporate that into your own satanic practice, knock yourself out. Absolutely. Okay. Moving on. Let's see here. But up that's the please hold music up it up. But here's it here's a really interesting question pertaining specific physically to the marriage rituals. I know that legally we'd only be able to marry two people. But I'm curious religiously. Could we officiate polygamous weddings? What about satanic pet weddings? can those be polygamous as well? Okay, answer maybe the first part of that question polygamous weddings?

Greg Stevens 45:19 I'll answer both parts. Okay. I think the answer to both parts is the same at this point, which is unfortunate, because I think that, you know, we the, the fact that marriages are legally restricted to only two people, I think there's that that's still a vestige of, of a particular type of thinking that, you know, is inherited from certain religious traditions, or recent interpretations of certain religious traditions. And so I think it's a shame. But that being said, what I would be I guess, and I haven't, I haven't researched this specific issue. But I would, what comes to mind, when I hear that question is that I would want to be careful about my about the use of language in this in this case, if since the word marriage has certain sorts of legal things, I would wonder if there would be any, you know, potentially negative implications or consequences of using the terms so freely, that we were officially calling something, a wedding or a marriage, when it was, you know, plainly, outside of what is considered a legal marriage. And that's me being in notes like, we could, but I would just I would want to tread a little bit carefully. And I would want to spend some more time thinking about it, because we are in a, we are in a position as the Satanic Temple of, you know, being under a lot of scrutiny. And being under you know, the potential for criticism, all related to you know, are they serious, serious religion? Are they, you know, are they for real, and I would hate for there to be a, I would hate for our lawyer to be standing up in court one day, and having to defend a marriage that was performed by one of our ministers, and have the other attorney, pull out some certificate of marriage between, you know, for people and their pet dog, and say, These people don't take mirrors seriously, look at this, right. So that's what comes to mind, I would have to think through some more, but the only, the only reason I would be hesitant, is not because I personally think that there's anything wrong with all kinds of constellations of, you know, relation of committed relationship, but just like literally because of the word marriage, and the way that we are, you know, and we have to be mindful of, you know, our position sort of within the greater culture. So that that would be the only reason that I would be like, you know, let's have the polygamous pet commitment ceremonies. Or, you know, something like that, perhaps

Stephen Bradford Long 48:26 do the seven tenets. And TST as a whole support the concept of Beast reality.

Greg Stevens 48:32 Why are you asking me that question?

Stephen Bradford Long 48:35 The answer is no. For anyone who's wondering, just because I have just seeing the sound clips on YouTube right now, for that this is just us. This is just me covering my ass. Oh, right. Okay. That's what that answer is. The answer is no. beasty reality is not marrying your dog.

Greg Stevens 48:58 I'm actually going to I'm going to I'm going to make a more broad study.

Stephen Bradford Long 49:00 Yes, please.

Greg Stevens 49:01 The the ethically in you relationship requires affirmative consent of all parties. Yes. If there is any person, including that, you know, puppers and kitty cats those people if there's a person who can easily give quick and not give clear affirmative consent, then you can't like do that with them like yeah, that's good. Good. Feels so weird, like, explained it. So it's funny because after you explained it, I could like see how you know me having a offhand comment about like the commitment ceremonies between yes, that their minds would go to that and that makes me sad, but I understand.

Stephen Bradford Long 49:49 Pena Moo I live in terror of Twitter. I live in perpetual terror of the right wing Q anon goons on Twitter and so on. Right. So if dear listeners, if you clip anything about that, just be sure to include that previous clip as well, just so it's all in context. That's my humble request. Okay. Let's see here. I should title this as a satanic Minister, can you marry your dog? I think that would be a very eye catching title for this episode. What do you think?

Greg Stevens 50:20 I think that I love that. I love that that specific phrasing contains a particular semantic ambiguity. Can you marry your dog to another dog? Sure. Do you mean you bury the dog like this? Is?

Stephen Bradford Long 50:40 There? Yes, there? There are a lot of ways that question can go. Let's see.

Greg Stevens 50:45 I mean, I don't even know that now that now. Now that we're not you forced me to fucking take this seriously.

Stephen Bradford Long 50:52 I'm like, That's the remedy you always take what do you call out to my podcast? Can is it

Greg Stevens 50:57 actually proper, philosophically proper to have a commitment ceremony between two pets? If they because they don't speak the same languages you cannot clearly and definitively express consent to the fact that they want to be in a marriage like that out. Now that we're going down this rabbit hole? Uh huh. Like I would actually it's because it sounds so cute. I didn't even occur to me first, like, oh, marriages between pets. That's so cute. But now that I'm thinking about it, like, if we're going to if we're going to take the idea seriously, and have it be something other than just a goofy joke, then which presumably if you're asking whether a minister can do it, and it's not a goofy joke, because if you only want it to be goofy joke, doesn't have to be a minister that does it. Right. But if you if you mean it more than a goofy jokes, and I am concerned that these pets don't understand what the human concept of marriage is, and therefore cannot consent and even if they could, I'm not sure how we would be able to know for sure, given the language barrier that they do. So I'm like, I don't know you should be marrying your pet now. Now. That's another thing to be clipped out like a cute pet stuff or whatever. But like, I don't know if we're gonna if we're gonna be doing this thought experiment. I'm just saying you got to think about how consent plays out in the pet world.

Stephen Bradford Long 52:26 If if Pena MOU was against cute pet stuff, I would have assassinated him long ago, this, this friendship would have ended years ago, it wouldn't have even started. Okay. Well, that's all very interesting. And actually, I can't remember if this actually happened, or if this was a Parks and Rec episode, but there was like, two gay penguins getting married. In a zoo. I I think that the Parks and Rec episode might have actually been loosely based on an actual, like, mock a gay wedding. That is you had for two gay penguins. And it was very, very cute. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

Greg Stevens 53:08 I remember the gay penguins. I don't remember if there was a mock ceremony for them. I just remember that when they first you know, when the when it first sort of came to light I remember the news stories about the penguins that seems to be you know, in a committed in a committed, you know, monogamous situation. And then there was a thing where they like because they're gay. They like I think at one point they like stole someone else's eggs just sit on it. And like that raises all sorts of ethical questions. But

Stephen Bradford Long 53:37 gay behavior, don't don't,

Greg Stevens 53:39 don't don't, don't steal, steal the egg. But like, that's kind of as far as I like paid attention to it. There may in fact, I wouldn't be shocked at all, if there had been some sort of cutesy ceremony involved in that.

Stephen Bradford Long 53:52 So you do not foresee any satanic officially sanctioned satanic gay penguin weddings in the future?

Greg Stevens 54:02 No, we would I think I think we would have to develop the technology to be able to communicate to the penguins what the human concept of a wedding is, and to receive their affirmative consent before we could do that officially. Yeah,

Stephen Bradford Long 54:16 perfect. The thumbprint thing on my iPhone isn't working and it's driving me nuts and really slowing down operations here. Okay, someone on Discord asked. I'd love to know about the process that he ie pin A mu and others went through to identify the values, ethics, ideals, knowledge, skills, etc, that a person needs to be officially a minister. This is not altruism. I'm being I'm doing this work to for my own religious tradition to some degree and feeling largely adrift. Okay, that's interesting. Let me see if I can contextualize this a bit. I think there's a broader question here of how, how does how does the ordination program fit within a larger constellation of values and traditions that we're drawing from, is I think what I'm hearing in this question. Does that make sense?

Greg Stevens 55:09 It does, I'm thinking about the question. And I'm like, if so, in the latter part of 2019, I started really doing a bunch of research about what being redeemed means, what it takes for ordination to be legally recognized, trying to understand what it means in different religious contexts. I explored there are many religions, that or more specific churches that do actually make available online, their ordination standards, in some cases, it's just kind of a very quick one page webpage that like sort of summarizes the big picture. In other cases, they have like a whole booklet, you know, whole, a whole PDF, like, these are the exact procedures and requirements. But over the course of exploring those and researching that end event, I came to realize that although there is, you know, there are some things in common, it is very seems very freeform, you know, it can be anything from some religions, that require like a one year internship under an already ordained person and putting this many hours of service work in, and then, you know, a series of in person interviews and all of this stuff. And then there are some where it is, you know, very, very much not that, of course, I mean, there's like Universal Life Church where you just click a button, but I'm excluding that for the purposes of this conversation, but even like, within the ones that are more, you know, they're interested in nurturing a clergy, there are still, you know, some where it's like, well, you need to have a recommendation from the head of a, you know, a congregation or, you know, the community that you have been a part of, for more than three years, or whatever. And you have to, like, do this, this and this, sometimes there's a test, sometimes there isn't. It was so much variety that I began to sort of, you know, just for my own self and trying to figure out how to craft something right, I began to sort of despair, like, I was like, How can I know what is actually part of what's needed? So then I turn to look for on the sort of government side after already having explored a wide range of religious side, femicide there, it's even worse. Because what they don't tell you. What they don't tell you is that government doesn't actually get its fingers into that. Like, I was able to get myself so frustrated and feeling adrift, was that the word that the person use, feeling adrift? Absolutely. Because I would go to all of these different, you know, individual state, state government websites, you know, what are the requirements for someone to be able to legally solemnize a marriage? You know, it can usually be ordained minister of, you know, any religious tradition? And I'm like, oh, okay, surely, surely, somewhere in this government documents, they will go on to describe what it takes for this to be true. But know, all that you need is a letter, a certificate, an ID, a letter from a church saying, Yes, this person has gone through our process of becoming ordained, and has has been granted by us all of the rights associated with that within our church. So from the government's point of view, is as long as there is a church that is a legally rent recognized church entity that is willing to write the letter and make give you the certificate, and that says, This person has gone through our process, whatever that is, and has all of the authority to, you know, perform, has all the rights and, and permissions associated with that role, or whatever the phrasing is. And that's, that's all they care about. So So then, like, I really it was, in some ways, it was kind of freeing. I did do some additional research on the legal side of it, because there are, I wouldn't, you know, again, I referred to this already. Being the Satanic Temple, we are under a lot of scrutiny. We're under a lot of potential criticism, right for an accusation of like, Are they real religion, etc, etc. So there are certain things that I did put into our program, specifically to guard against the kinds of accusations that we might expect. So for example, there are states that have nullified, Universal Life Church of Oregon or, you know, marriages that were solemnized by university lecturers, Minister, because the Universal Life Church is one of those places where you just fill in your email and click a button and you're ordained the in that legal case, the, you know, nullified, that the argument of the of the judge in that case was that there was in or the legal theory, right, insufficient connection between the ordaining body and the ordained. And so, and you know, and so research on things like that part of the reason that we require renewal every year, is to guard against the possible accusation that if someone was ordained 20 years ago, and are still doing stuff, that there's insufficient connection, so that's actually there for that reason. We, you know, again, for four reasons similar to that, you know, we you have to provide, what information are we required to provide your birthday? And you know, your address just internally, we're not going to put it anywhere, but like, have it on file so that if a court order says we wouldn't, we want to make sure that you, the Satanic Temple, know who your ministers are? had that little bit of extra information supports that in court? So these are there were a lot of little things that I did do trying to look at the legal cases, basically looking at the question of what are cases where the actions or the validity of ordained ministers have been challenged, and sort of bacon things to guard against those.

Stephen Bradford Long 1:02:00 And And just to clarify, so there will be a database of ministers, but that will be strictly confidential, none of that information will be released, it is purely for legal reasons.

Greg Stevens 1:02:13 It's for legal reasons, it will be confidential, it will not even that because that information isn't actually needed to be, you know, online as part of the database of like the satanic ministry.com. website, it's not going to even be housed in like in that same in the same database that that that website is so

Stephen Bradford Long 1:02:33 so create one website.

Greg Stevens 1:02:35 Right, exactly, it won't be there. Well, we are figuring out, we are figuring out a system so that people can do some basic verification of whether or not someone who is claiming to be an active ordained minister, whether that is an actual claim, everybody wants to ordain, everyone's going to have a unique Minister ID number that's going to be printed on their ID card, it's going to be under certificate, and it's going to be something that is the F and that it's going to be there partially because if a minister is going to register to perform a at a county clerk's office, because they want to perform a wedding and one of the places that requires ministers to register, that county clerk depending on how ornery they are, may feel they need the ability to verify. So there's a little phone number, this little way to check and you know, we have to be willing to say, oh, yeah, this, this ID number is an act of you know, if they say the ID number, and the last name, we can say, Yep, those match and that's active. Now, we've been trying to think of ways to implement something that maybe look operable, even like online, but we want to be very careful. It could be something simple, like a place on the website where someone can key in, you know, the minister ID number and the first three letters of the last name and say, either match or no match like either yes, this is an active ordained minister No, as a very simple check. So if someone is, is claiming, you know, to be an ordained minister, there's a simple way to get at least a first pass validation. But this is all so that's an idea that we have, the reason I bring it up is because we do recognize there's a need for some ability to verify things, but none of the verification methods are in any way going to require the personal information, including full real name is stored in a database that is accessible through the website or that is, you know, something that people would be able to get into.

Stephen Bradford Long 1:04:40 Yeah, definitely. Because, I mean, being a Satanist is very stigmatized and a lot of areas and so protecting their identity is super important. So yeah, take we take that seriously.

Greg Stevens 1:04:53 Absolutely. Now, I will say it this just seems do get into an interesting realm here. For people who want to legally perform wedding ceremonies, in some states, not in all states, in some states, they, when they require a minister beforehand, to go in to the county clerk, show their legal ID, their certificate of ordination, the letter from the church saying, Yes, this is a ordain person, and fill out a form and register. And there are some states that publish that list. And so like, and we're gonna put all this in documentation as well, like, you know, for our ministers, so they're aware of this, if you do not want your real name published as ministers, then, like, you know, there's nothing that we as TST can do, because that's a law in that state. It's not all states, I think it's a minority of states that have that kind of arrangement. But like, check to make sure that, you know, if you don't want that to happen, check to make sure that, you know, when you're when your friend asks you to solve them needs their their marriage, the it's not going to be in a place that will require that right. So this isn't something that is going to be like this, you know, people who are ordained by the Satanic Temple, are in no way, going to automatically have their real name, you know, accessible to the public or on any kind of list or anything like that. But if they want to additionally, like perform weddings in certain specific states, then it's possible that those states have transparency laws. And so that's something that it would be up to the Minister to sort of, you know, check that and then be voluntary, like they can always just choose not to perform weddings in that state.

Stephen Bradford Long 1:06:46 Perfect. All right. One final question. Someone on Discord asks if people can pay to study the materials of the program without actually going, will there be? Let me see if I can rephrase this? Will there be an option for people to pay to study the materials of the program without actually going through with the ordination process? For example, if they're ineligible for some reasons, such as I don't know, age,

Greg Stevens 1:07:17 right, that took a weird left turn at the end.

Stephen Bradford Long 1:07:20 Okay, so for, for example, like someone under 18.

Greg Stevens 1:07:24 Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay. So, at first, I was like, what, are they too old to take the course? And okay. That's so this is a good question. So, because people who would be ineligible might include people who are under 18 People who are interested in the coursework, but they're actually not members of this extra? Do we want to allow that? That's an interesting question. We can

Stephen Bradford Long 1:07:55 talk later.

Greg Stevens 1:07:56 Yeah, like? So the answer to this question is like, this is something that's been evolving, because at first, you know, it was just like, Oh, we're just gonna offer ordination, you either get ordained to the whole thing, or you don't do it at all. And that was kind of the initial concept. There was so much interest right in and there were so many people, and I didn't like I expected there be interest, but I didn't expect you to be so many people who literally reached reached out and said that there were, we're willing to pay money. It's not that we're trying to get something for free. It's just that, you know, we we can't actually do this full thing. But we still want take the course. So that in addition to the fact that there are going to be because we're rolling out first only in the US, but we have a lot of international members, and international, you know, leaders as well. So our the thinking of this has evolved over time. This is where this is where we are right now,

Stephen Bradford Long 1:08:50 as of March 9. Yeah, exactly. Like like this shit changes real fast sometimes. So by the time this comes out, hopefully there won't be new developments. But just so everyone knows, we are recording this on March 9, and I will be releasing this as soon as I possibly can. So hopefully this will be relevant when it still comes out.

Greg Stevens 1:09:10 And I'm sure I don't I actually don't expect that many changes, you know, moving forward, there were a lot of changes moving up because it was a matter of service trying to think through what to make available, what to offer, is it the same price, is that cheaper? You know, it seems like it should be a little cheaper because we don't need the background check people who aren't going to be ordained and the background check as part of the costs. So, after thinking through all those details, this is where we are right now, when it opens up so that you are able to register as a candidate, you will have two registration options, you will be able to register as a ordination candidate or as a non ordination seeking student serve similar to the idea like in universities the non degree seeking right to take a course taking courses as an undergrad, Sikhism similar idea. So, the full ordination program is $149, the non ordination seeking will be $99. And the difference is both, you're going to get access to going through the coursework, after the coursework is done. If you're on the non ordination seeking track, then that's the end of it for you. If you're if you're seeking ordination, then you have the next steps of things like the background checks, the letter of approval, these are things that, again, are described, if you're not familiar, you're just described on the standard ministry.com website. So you so the people on both sides will be able to proceed through all the coursework up to the final exam. If you're on the non ordination course, like, I don't know, we haven't designed to yet but maybe some sort of, you could email us some cute digital, like certificate of completion of the coursework or whatever. But it wouldn't be an ordination certificate, it would just be like you complete it, you graduated from this course. And then the other detail of this that I think is important is, if you are, if the only requirements that you don't fulfill is that you are in a, you're outside the US, and you fully intend to become ordained. Once it rolls out to other countries, then you will have an opportunity when we reach out to other countries to pay the difference only and go through, you know the rest of the steps. And it'll be we won't have to retake the coursework. It'll be we're trying to simplify the process for people if literally, the only reason they're not in No, they're not getting redeemed now is because of their because they're outside the US now, whether, again, this is sort of something, is there gonna be some time limit, like if you go through the noncoding trek now and in 10 years, decide you want to be ordained, is that going to be allowed? Or is there a time limit, honestly, like, that sort of stuff is still sort of being decided on. But in principle, I want to encourage once we roll it out, once it becomes available to you, if you absolutely intend to become ordained, but you live in France, or Canada or Australia, and so we're not quite there yet. You can register as a non ordination seeking candidate, pay the $99. And then when we get to your country, only pay the difference, only do whatever the additional steps are not the coursework, and you will then be ordained after that.

Stephen Bradford Long 1:12:41 You mentioned the fees, just for the sake of full transparency. Where are those fees going? What what are they covering? And and where, like, what what's the purpose for for the fees for the ordination program?

Greg Stevens 1:12:55 Well, I mean, the entire program cost money to start up and has ongoing costs. Yes. Um, so like, there's an online online learning platform, we, you know, we wanted to, we wanted to really do it right, and use a, you know, the platforms that we're using for the assessment, you know, quizzes and tests, and the actual, you know, online course, we wanted to use one that, you know, automatically includes with it, all of the taken care of, and having, you know, being able to deal with all of the accessible, various accessibility needs, various security needs, you know, there are a lot of things that we didn't need to reinvent from scratch, because online coursework is a thing, right. But you have to pay, like, you know, to use Windows systems that is very thorough, and, you know, handles all of these different sorts of accessibility security things like so with costs, you know, a constant accustomed to start off, it costs something on an annual basis, this same thing with the distribution, you know, of having the assessments to quizzes and tests, and other things as well. So there are a lot of costs associated with it. Initially, when we start rolling out, plus all the people that are testing in the first wave, or it's going to be free. All of the people who are currently in leadership, they're going to be required to take it to stay in leadership, we're making it free for them, because everything will be fair, it just wouldn't be ethical to say that you're already in this leadership position. And now you have to pay money to stay in it. That's weird. So it's going to be free for them. So we're actually putting off because we want to do brief be principles and we want to be, you know, good stewards of the community. We're putting off our actual generation of any revenue for a pretty long time and while we're accruing all these costs, so when you ask, where's the money going to go? My first answer is we're going to try to break even eventually, eventually, hopefully, we will achieve that. And once we do, I would love have to use any money, you know, beyond the break even point to go into really, you know, as I said before the earlier question about like, what's your vision for the, you know, the program in five years or 10 years and I talked about enriching the tools and resources we have available to our ministers, I would love to be able to reinvest in, you know, really improving what's available to our ordained ministers, and giving more perks not just in terms of doing research on, you know, let me know, there's there are certain sorts of certification programs that in addition to just being ordained, ministers would have to do if they want to do Hospice Visits. Sometimes those costs money, I would love for this program to actually generate enough revenue after breaking even to be able to cover that for our ministers who want to do it. Like these are things that I absolutely fantasize about being able to do, once we get to that point, it's going to be a while, because, you know, I know that I don't want to sound dismissive of this, I do know that for a lot of individuals, you know, $149 is not trivial. And I completely understand that. But I also want to emphasize that like, you know, nobody's getting rich off of this either aren't because there are a lot of expenses involved. And there's a lot of stuff, you know, that is the we already have been building in the background for ordained ministers. And that is where I would like to focus all of our attention is adding even more so that in the future,

Stephen Bradford Long 1:16:36 yeah, no one's going to be running away to Palm Springs with with the money in other words, like this. So all of the fees, they really do go either to just covering the basic cost of maintenance for this program, or they and once that's covered, once, once it breaks, even then it will really go to enriching, that's the wrong word. It will go to it will go to building the ordination. Even more so.

Greg Stevens 1:17:10 And honestly, like, if we get if we get so much interest in this, that there is, you know, I would love I mean, jeez, we have people have put so much time it takes the the people who have created these initial 10 lessons in the core curriculum, put their hearts and souls even though I don't believe in souls, not sure I believe in hearts, not just kidding. But they've put everything into they've put everything into creating these, they put a lot of time into researching it and filming it. And we're going to be asking for people who are interested in different topics to create the elective lessons that I mentioned earlier, I would love for this program to get, you know, stable enough that we could we could do something, as a way of showing our appreciation and respect for the time is something financial, that we have right now. Right now, it's all volunteers. I would love for it to be more than that. But again, you know, this is the sort of thing that like, when you ask, what's the money you get? When we have money? This is what I would like to do with it. You know? Definitely. And, yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of possibility out there.

Stephen Bradford Long 1:18:30 I was talking to one of the one of the creators of one of the lessons and they said that doing the lesson, make creating that lesson was the hardest and most taxing intellectually taxing thing they had done since completing their master's program.

Greg Stevens 1:18:49 Yeah, people, people, I working with people too. With that, because, you know, we started off with an overall, like, the topics of each of the lessons came from the CNN. And then, you know, I was listening to flesh out, you know, a little bit of like, you know, making sure that we had a common understanding of what more specific things should be covered. But then after that, it was all in the hands of the people who presented lessons. And that was on purpose because, one, we chose people to present the lessons based on people who we knew had the background and experience and knowledge to present that lesson. It was partially expertise, but also because it was it was important, I thought, you know, I definitely think it's important that the people who are presenting lesson feel connected to something they're passionate about and that they feel, you know, really invested in because that comes across, you know, when they present the lessons, so it was very much in their hands to have like, Hey, this is the overall topic. These are some bullet points of things to cover, but each of them A presenter has created the lessons themselves. So I, you know, I appreciate so much that you know what you just said from there one person I'm sure is a sentiment that is echoed by most, if not all, of the people who did the lessons like they put everything into these things. And I appreciate that so much.

Stephen Bradford Long 1:20:18 Absolutely. Is there anything else that we need to cover? I think I think we're close to wrapping up.

Greg Stevens 1:20:23 This has been fantastic. Thank you so much for having me on. This has been I feel like these have been great questions. So I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to these things.

Stephen Bradford Long 1:20:33 Absolutely. And if there are any questions that weren't answered here, do go check out the satanic or do go check out satanic ministry.com. If you have questions, it will probably be there. And in the coming weeks. If you have any other questions, you can reach out through the website. Yeah, you can reach out through the website.

Greg Stevens 1:20:54 And I also people can reach out to me on Twitter. I'm at Greg Stevens on Twitter, and I only i don't i It might take me a little while I'm not constantly on Twitter. And it's possible that I might miss it. But I you know, that's the only social media platform that I check regularly anymore. So people can feel free to engage me on Twitter with questions about ministry as well if they would like

Stephen Bradford Long 1:21:19 perfect. All right, well, that is it for this show. The music is by the jelly rocks and eleventy seven you can find them on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to music. As always, the show is made possible by my amazing patrons, my own personal lords and saviors who ensure that I can bring you interesting content every single week until I die. And if you want to join their number, please go to patreon.com forward slash Steven Bradford long for $1 $3 $5 a month you get extra content every single week conversations with my Christian pastor friend Timothy, ranging from from politics to religious stuff to Satanism to whatever's in the news that particular day or week. The show is written produced and edited by me and Dante salmoni and this is a production of raw candy recordings as always Hail Satan and thanks for listening don't think. Read the script

1:23:34 Right