On Saturday, July 25, a group of ‘devil worshippers’ unveiled an 8-foot-tall statue of the Satanic Temple’s Baphomet in Detroit, the USA.
According to CBS Local, the event which sold tickets for $25 was sold-out.
Reports say that the event took place at an undisclosed industrial building downtown Detroit, with an estimated crowd of 700 people in attendance.
CBN News reports that the Satanic Temple had plans for a private event at a Detroit restaurant, but the owner canceled the group’s reservation after learning of what was planned.
Bert Dearing, the owner of the restaurant, was quoted by Web Pro News: “When I rented the place, I just thought it was a church. I didn’t know about the unveiling of a statue. We weren’t aware they were into devil worshiping.”
Witnesses say that attendees were forced to clear two security checkpoints at separate locations before arriving.
However, opponent Matt Pearson, an executive producer of Church Militant, discovered the location at Chene Park in downtown Detroit.
According to a Fox News report, the “guests were washed in red light shining down from the rafters at the venue as “dark punk” bands played and DJs performed from a stage located beneath a lighted, upside-down crucifix. Satanic Temple officials delivered speeches and a pair of shirtless men held candles on either side of the statue, prior to its unveiling.”
A ‘no photography policy’ was passed at the event, but despite the decree, a six-second Vine has surfaced of the ‘great unveiling’.
Meanwhile, the news has now gone viral, and some prominent Nigerians have begun to share it on tweets and Facebook statuses.
For instance, the director of media and publicity for Jonathan/Sambo campaign organization, Olufemi Olu-Kayode, was impressed by the statue’s height.
The Satanic Temple says it supports separation of church and state, hence the statue was meant for the state capitol in Oklahoma City until its Supreme Court banned a monument of the Ten Commandments.
Jex Blackmore, the director of the Satanic Temple Detroit chapter, said temple members planned to transport the sculpture to Arkansas, where earlier this year, the governor signed a bill authorizing a Ten Commandments monument on the State Capitol’s grounds.
The Temple had unsuccessfully applied to have the statue placed near the Ten Commandments monument installed in 2012 on the Oklahoma State Capitol grounds.
