In The Satanic Rituals, Anton LaVey predicted that by the year 2000, Christ would have become a “well-known folk myth.” Satan was delighted by LaVey’s optimism back in 1972 when the book was published but thinks that today it is safe to suggest that the black pope’s optimism was unwarranted. The Devil is not certain why Anton LaVey made such a bold forecast. Perhaps he overrated the importance of his newly established The Church of Satan with unbridled disregard of the Balance Factor, but LaVey may have genuinely believed that the contemporary zeitgeist heralded a new age of reason and human-centered progress.
After all, Anton LaVey explained in some detail in The Satanic Bible that he had evidence of a new, Satanic age: Anton LaVey had observed that modern Christianity is unlike Christianity of old and that Christians today largely revel in the Seven Deadly Sins, think of themselves, are materialist, and otherwise behave as Anton LaVey claimed “the Satanist” does. His logical conclusion was that Christianity was dying, and that the very name “Christianity” should therefore be abandoned. People should recognize that they had already found a name for their modern practices: Satanism.
Satan is flattered that His name was proposed as the denomination for this new age but my Master had rather hoped for a little more. His Infernal Majesty does not feel content that all that is ostensibly asked is to say “Satanism” instead of “Christianity” and to admit it. In fact, the Devil is offended by Anton LaVey’s recommendation. Satan disagrees with Anton LaVey’s very premise that there is any evidence of a “Satanic age” and refuses to have His infernal name sullied by being assigned the followers of His mortal enemy.
It is true that Christianity today is nothing like the original cult, and even early Christianity evolved quickly. Had someone decided to better call Saul of Tarsus back from the dead after two or three centuries, he would probably not have recognized the religion that he founded. Yet, it would nonetheless be Christianity, in a form that had followed the times. Religions always follow the times. They do not replace themselves with something else as they evolve. Religions are not static phenomena. They stay “alive” by changing, not in a desperate attempt to survive but as a root component of society. However Christianity has manifested itself throughout its two millennia, at any random point in time this would be just how and what Christianity was. It never ceased to be Christianity, nor did it become more or less “true” Christianity over time. Less authentic, perhaps, but not necessarily “less Christian.” Like a monster that keeps sprouting new limbs and developing new abilities until eventually it is irreconcilable with its original form, it is nonetheless the same organism, and so are religions.
Had Anton LaVey’s request that Christianity shelve its name for having evolved had any merit, all religions would have changed their names numerous times throughout History. Satan thinks that Anton LaVey’s demand that religions either stick to their original form or die (by renaming themselves) reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of religion, which he so often criticized.
What Anton LaVey observed was fully legitimate Christianity that was no less deserving of the name than during its original teachings. The only evidence Anton LaVey found was that Christianity was still very much alive and well. When Anton LaVey realized that Christians did not behave “like Christians,” hence being “Satanists,” he did not think to first question his own standards of measurement as would any researcher: if only few Christians matched his personal interpretation of Christianity, the obvious conclusion would have been to conclude that his definition of Christianity was too exclusive, not that Christians had become a rare breed and Christianity was dying.
The Devil is not much for enveloping Himself in Christian theology but He knows to study His enemy, and He thinks LaVey made an additional mistake when he described Christians and Christianity. Satan thinks that in addition to the above, Anton LaVey missed another key element.
There are literally tens of thousands of Christian groups and organizations who all disagree and each considers themselves to be the best kind of Christianity. They are so diverse that no catch-all definition encompasses them all. Anton LaVey spent a little less than 2,000 words describing Christianity before leaving the topic to rail against “white” witchcraft in order to distinguish his take on occultism from the already widespread interest in it in the 1960es. If one truly wishes to describe Christianity as a singular structure, 2,000 words involve far too much detail. One can say little more than that the religion has some concept of a “God,” usually incorporates some idea of Jesus, and often applies some interpretation of the Bible; and that is all. It is impossible to make a sweeping definition of how their god (or gods) and their scripture is being perceived, interpreted, and used.
Anton LaVey may have witnessed nuns who satisfied his fetish by deliberately revealing a piece of thigh, but in his indulgent observation he forgot that other nuns would never permit such perversion. For all the Devil knows, Anton LaVey might have stumbled upon a precursor to the Children of God‘s use of “flirty fishing,” which on the one hand was Christian behavior (according to the Children of God), and on the other hand did not exemplify Christians as a whole. It is not valid to conclude, as he did in The Satanic Bible, that Christianity is taking one direction or another based upon such an observation.
There is no such thing as true Christianity, or even anything that comes close. In fact, there is no such thing as false Christianity. Christianity is as Christians do, no more, no less, and there are literally billions of different Christians. Only God can judge which of the between 30,000 and 40,000 Christian groups is “right,” if any, but alas: God does not exist, leaving no arbiter of Christian correctness. One can observe how Christians within different groups tend to behave but one cannot state with any certainty that one or another “is Christianity.” It is possible to evaluate degrees of authenticity compared with the original, Jewish cult or to evaluate representativeness—for example, the aforementioned Children of God are not particularly representative of Christians—but such evaluations do not express what Christianity is, nor can they propose which kind of Christianity is “true.” Paul the Apostle may have been the original Christian but perhaps the much later Calvinists better understood the will of God? The Catholic Church sports 1,3 billion members but perhaps the about 50,000 Christadelphians got closer to the truth, had there been a god to decide?
Anton LaVey’s first mistake was to think there is such a thing as “true” Christianity—and that it obeyed his personal interpretation—and to conclude that it was being abandoned because he viewed Christians through a lens where he saw what he wanted to see and ignored everything that contradicted his beliefs. His second mistake was to consider Christianity a monolithic entity, leading him to erroneously conclude that Christianity was waning because to him it appeared internally inconsistent. He failed to understand that there are many kinds of Christianity, many of which thoroughly disagree with each other, and that secular behavior in one Christian group neither indicates a general Christian trend nor that Christianity is somehow breaking apart.
This all makes The Evil One a little worried about Anton LaVey’s ability to define Satanism, because whatever Anton LaVey recognized as “Satanism” among Christians turns out to be bona fide Christianity. Satan has only too often heard Christians accusing each other of succumbing to the Devil for not being adequately pious, and finds LaVey playing this age-old Christian shame-game, too. Granted, this is how the Devil was constructed to begin with, but my Master prefers to be the master of His own raison d’être, thank you very much.
Satan originally explained the above in much shorter terms, but we lesser demons must sometimes digest His infernal wisdom and consequently churn out lengthy commentaries before we grasp it ourselves. The crux of the matter is that my Master regrets to inform His followers that He rejects the portion of His bible that discusses “evidence” of a Satanic age. He wants His followers to understand that when they believe that Christians behave “Satanically,” often they have one of two reasons: at best, the follower is observing entirely generic human behavior that is shared across all and no religion and thus neither non-Christian nor Satanic. At worse, this follower is still a Christian who does not realize that when he or she approves of other Christians, it is not because other Christians behave Satanically but vice versa.