Stephen Bradford Long is a writer, yoga teacher, and Satanist living and working in North Carolina. His work focuses on religion, sexuality, culture, and other subjects that strike his fancy.
In this first ever Book Club episode, I’m joined by Matt Langston of Eleventyseven and Rock Candy Recordings manager Rebecca Shaw to discuss The Power Worshippers by Katherine Stewart.
The Power Worshippers is a terrifying, necessary book about the rise of Christian nationalism in United States and abroad. Buy it here.
In this episode of Sacred Tension I’m joined by my good friend Brother Castello to have a friendly conversation about the Pope, the presidential election, and rituals that keep us centered through tumultuous times. If you’d like to contact Brother Castello, email him at castellonsolidarity@gmail.com
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As I’ve watched online leftist spaces and parts of my local LGBTQ community, I’ve noticed a concerning trend. Many LGBTQ people (especially the younger, post-millennial generations) seem to be progressively infatuated with their identities, and centering it as the most important part of their existence.
In this episode of Sacred Tension I’m joined once again by the incredible Shiva Honey to talk ritual, nontheistic mysticism, and Satanic Tarot. Find Shiva Honey at https://www.serpentinae.com/
This is a guest post by Greg Stevens. Greg Stevens is a longtime leader in The Satanic Temple, and currently acts as Director of Ministry and Executive Producer of TST TV.
I thoroughly enjoy the passion I see in members of The Satanic Temple when they are unraveling the finer points and applications of The Seven Tenets. These tenets express strong core ethical priorities, while at the same time being general enough to allow each individual to develop and explore their own interpretation. For some people, the phrase “compassion and empathy toward all creatures” in Tenet I resonates naturally with their choice of veganism. For them, veganism is a part of their Satanism. But people may also interpret Tenet I differently, and many Satanists are not Vegan. So it goes with other moral questions, as well: from addiction intervention to euthenasia. It fills me with joy when Satanists talk through scenarios, often making discoveries: not only about the way other people interpret and balance the tenets, but oftentimes also about their own, often unconscious, assumptions and priorities.
I recently had the pleasure of engaging in a public inter-religious dialogue with the Evangelical John Morehead. While the video is primarily geared towards Evangelicals and helping them overcome stereotypes of religious minorities, I also thought the video would be interesting to my fellow Satanists.
In this Episode of Sacred Tension I’m joined by Satanic horror poet Simon Widdop to celebrate October and talk about our mutual obsession with horror. We discuss the psychological underpinnings of enjoying horror, how horror makes us think deeply about ethics, the Christian propaganda of supernatural horror, his latest book The Poet From the Black Lagoon, and more. Find Simon Widdop here.
This is a guest post by John W. Morehead. John W. Morehead is the Director of Multi-faith Matters. He is the co-editor and contributing author for A Charitable Orthopathy: Christian Perspectives on Emotions in Multifaith Engagement, and Encountering New Religious Movements: A Holistic Evangelical Approach, and the editor of Beyond the Burning Times: A Pagan and Christian in Dialogue. He has been involved for many years in multi-faith relationships and conversations in the contexts of Islam, Mormonism, Paganism, and Atheism. His ongoing research in multi-faith engagement and religious conflict involves bringing social psychology and social neuroscience into conversation with a theology of love of our religious neighbors. Particular areas of interest are “us vs. them” intergroup conflict, evangelical concerns for purity in relation to syncretism, and Christian Nationalism.
I’m a normie Satanist. With the exception of the occasional pentagram or Satanic Temple t-shirt, nothing about me would give away my Satanic proclivities. I pride myself on being generally milquetoast, polite, and unremarkable. I value kindness, courteousness, and making everyone feel welcome. I’m painfully averse to conflict.
This is the first ever solo Ask Me Anything episode of Sacred Tension. In this episode I take questions from my audience about my personal journey from Christianity to Satanism, how to handle an aversion to Christians, my take on protests and riots, my favorite pop culture representations of Satan, my thoughts on Satanists using Tarot, and much more.