Do Satanists Have a “Right” to Dis­play Demon­ic Idols in the Iowa Capi­tol? One Pas­tor Says Yes

In ear­ly Decem­ber the Satan­ic Tem­ple of Iowa put up a “hol­i­day” dis­play in the Iowa state capi­tol. This has gar­nered the atten­tion of some of the biggest names in the state and in the nation. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds put out an offi­cial state­ment call­ing the dis­play “objec­tion­able”

“Like many Iowans, I find the Satan­ic Temple’s dis­play in the Capi­tol absolute­ly objec­tion­able. In a free soci­ety, the best response to objec­tion­able speech is more speech, and I encour­age all those of faith to join me today in pray­ing over the Capi­tol and rec­og­niz­ing the nativ­i­ty scene that will be on dis­play – the true rea­son for the sea­son.”

Gov. Kim Reynolds, 12–12-23 Press Release

Pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Gov. Ron DeSan­tis of Flori­da even weighed in on the con­tro­ver­sy by plac­ing blame on the Trump admin­is­tra­tion:

“So It’s inter­est­ing, I heard this and then I was like, ‘Well how did it get there? Is that even a reli­gion?’ And lo and behold, the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion gave them approval to be under the IRS as a reli­gion. So that gave them the legal abil­i­ty to poten­tial­ly do it.”

Ron DeSan­tis, Com­ments on Satan­ic Dis­play

What has caught our eye at EWTC News is that Iowa Pas­tor and State House Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jon Dun­well has come to the defense of the Satan­ic idol in the name of “reli­gious free­dom” and Amer­i­can­ism. Dun­well, who rep­re­sents Iowa’s 38th dis­trict, has made a slew of social media posts on X defend­ing the Satan­ic Tem­ple of Iowa’s “right” to dis­play this blas­phe­mous idol.

What is a right? The sim­ple def­i­n­i­tion is:

1. Adjec­tive
   • Con­form­ing with or con­formable to jus­tice, law, or moral­i­ty.
   • In accor­dance with fact, rea­son, or truth; cor­rect.
   • Fit­ting, prop­er, or appro­pri­ate.
2. Noun
   • That which is just, moral, or prop­er.

It is hard to find a def­i­n­i­tion that match­es Dun­well’s stance. The dis­play is not just, moral, fac­tu­al, rea­son­able, truth­ful, cor­rect, fit­ting, prop­er, or appro­pri­ate. The only argu­ment is “law­ful,” but that assumes that a law, or its appli­ca­tion, does not have to con­form to jus­tice, moral­i­ty, etc.

That has not been lost on peo­ple, espe­cial­ly oth­er Chris­tians. Because of this, Dun­well has received a great deal of push­back by Chris­tians. In response Dun­well expressed his dis­ap­point­ment and com­mits to not back­down from defend­ing the “free­dom” of the Satanists to pub­licly dis­play a Satan­ic idol because he is a fol­low­er of Christ.

Dun­well open­ly defends the dis­play, and his rea­son­ing is that defend­ing it is lov­ing oth­ers and build­ing Christ’s King­dom. It should be not­ed that Christ com­mands us to love oth­ers enough to speak the truth to them, not sup­port their lies. Christ’s King­dom is also not built up by dis­play­ing shrines to demons. As Dun­well con­tin­ues to dou­ble down on defend­ing Satanism, ETWC News wants to reas­sure all of its fol­low­ers we are com­mit­ted to only sup­port­ing and defend­ing what God has declared right­eous.

UPDATE: the dis­play has been destroyed by an upset Chris­t­ian