The reasoning theists, atheists, liberals, libertarians, & conservatives of Secular Bible Study, First Minneapolis Circle of Reason, Circle of Ijtihad, & Winnipeg Circle of Reason join Interbelief Conversation Café for our 312th Plurationalist (Interbelief Reasoning) Dialogue by Zoom, “Luciferianism?"
“Anthony Fauci is a mass-murdering Luciferian.” – Oklahoma-based Christian Dominionist pastor & Founder of Pastors for Trump, Jackson Lahmeyer (2020 C.E.).
“Freemasonry is Luciferian. Their Freemason lodges worship the devil.” – French journalist Léo Taxil, in an exposé of the Catholic church, after pretending to convert to Catholicism and successfully entreating Pope Leo XIII to bless an anti-Masonic Council of Trent (1896, C.E.)
“They believe that the Heavenly God acted unjustly in casting Lucifer into the abyss. They look forward to the day when Lucifer will overthrow the God of Heaven and return to his glory… They even receive the body of the Lord every year at Easter from the hand of the priest and, carrying it in their mouths home, they throw it into the latrine in contempt of the Savior.” – Pope Gregory IX in his papal bull, Vox in Rama, paraphrasing his Inquisition’s pre-immolation “confessions” extracted under torture from Gnostic-influenced “western-buddhist” Christian Catharists and “proto-protestant” Christian Waldensians (1233, C.E.)
For venerating The Peacock Angel (whom, according to their Indo-Iranian-descended Babylonian and Sumerian monotheistic sect influenced by later Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Sufi Islam, was raised up by God to become the highest of his angels and the bringer of the light of knowledge to humanity, due to his refusal to bow down to Adam in place of God), the now-700,000 Yazidis worldwide have been continually persecuted since 637 C.E. by religious zealots within Christianity & Islam who mistakenly equated The Peacock Angel with their fallen angel Lucifer or Shaytan (Satan) -- most recently when, in Iraq & Syria after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, thousands of Yazidi men were killed while thousands of Yazidi women and girls were forced into sexual slavery by the fundamentalist terrorist group ISIS (“Islamic State of Iraq & Syria”). The attempted religious genocide of the Yazidis flowed from them being falsely accused of being “evil devil worshippers” for worshipping the one of God’s angels they were told, long before the rise of Christianity and Islam, was the world’s bringer of light, wisdom, and the knowledge of the difference between good and evil.
In Europe, once non-Abrahamic religions & worshippers, and Stoicism teachers & schools (or Stoa), were all largely expunged by the Middle Ages, Christian theocrats turned to falsely accusing Jews, Muslims, and Christian sects they considered heretical (Paulicians, Bogomils, Cathari, and Waldenses) of “worshipping the Devil.” This was interwoven with patriarchal theocratic politics, as many of the first heretical Christian faiths, including later early protestants, encouraged female equality, extending in some sects to religious leadership positions such as female priests, and to venerating ancient Gnostic Christian texts such as the Gospel of Mary Magdalene (which, along with other feminist gospels, was reclassified and banned from the canonical scripture as “apocryphal” by the Christian-converted Roman Emperor Constantine I, his collaborating pontiff of Rome, Pope Sylvester I, and their assembled Roman Empire’s Christian bishops, in his assembled First Council of Niceae -- now the modern town of Iznik, Türkiye -- in 325 C.E.).
In the U.S., small organizations proclaiming themeslves “Luciferians” largely did not exist until the 20th century. Each adopted different rationales for their use of the monicker -- including practicing wicca, occultism, simple anti-theocratic politics, or a philosophy of “enlightenment” that emulated Lucifer as the “morning star,” a symbol of enlightenment, independence and human progress, and kin to other ancient theological figures such as the Greek titan, Prometheus, who brought the knowledge of fire and technology to humanity, or the Jewish midrashic feminist first spouse, Lilith, who exerted her individual & equal rights to Adam, but when rebuffed by him and made to engage in sex only in the “missionary” position, spoke the name of God to grow wings & fly away from the Garden of Eden.
But in the early 21st Century, the name “Luciferian” has been adopted as name-calling, against self-proclaimed “democrats” or “progressives” -- to depict them as literally allied with, or controlled by, the Christian Devil, Lucifer (Satan). In this later extrapolation of “Luciferian” as a description of progressive political opponents, even progressive Christians have been labeled as Luciferians – most famously by President Donald Trump’s first U.S. National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn, whose “ReAwaken America” speakers routinely frame U.S. politics as a literal spiritual war between "God" and “Luciferians," while calling for a Christian theocratic state dominated by the true “chosen people” (white males). In this sense, “Luciferian” is one of many recent iterations of Christian Dominionist and MAGA right-wing speakers choosing to use derogatory name-calling to describe opposed U.S. Democratic party voters and politicians, or traditional moderate Republicans opposed to any right-wing radicalized political movement. It follows prior fallacious ad hominem neo-logisms, all designed to heighten right-wing supporters’ fearful emotional responses and garner more financial donations. These have included insults like “Snowflake,” “Cultural Marxist,” “Sexual Groomer,” “Woke,” “Libtard,” “Deep State,” “Elite,” “RINO,” “Globalist” (by neo-Nazis), and “The Cabal,” “Lizard People,” and “Baby Eaters” (by QAnon followers). The names used by political Democrats in the U.S. to describe themselves and their politics remains either “democrat,” or “progressive.”
Prior to the neologism “Luciferian” to describe centrist & progressive voters, the term “Satanic” was also used in the 1980s & 1990s, specifically in association with a conspiracy theory that “widespread Satanic ritual child abuse” was occurring in U.S. daycare centers. After claims of such abuse first emerged among therapists reporting adult patients who’d “recalled under hypnosis repressed childhood memories,” and children who’d acknowledged sexual abuse only in response to leading questions by poorly-trained police interviewers, investigations in both the United States and Britain found no evidence of any such ritual child abuse. But the conspiracy theory re-emerged among QAnon followers in the 2010s, with political progressives now being recast as “a Cabal of serpent-DNA lizard-people” who “rape and cannibalize” children to “become immortal.” In contrast, MAGA supporters still contend political liberals and progressive Christians in the U.S. are still human, but nonetheless still also “devil-possessed,” “persecutors of True Christians’ individual rights,” “God-hating,” “Luciferian,” and “Communist.”
So, what is Luciferianism? Does it rely on the opinion of the beholder? Or on the opinion of the opiner? Is it indeed an ad hominem insult, and, if so, is that sufficient reason to never use it? Or is it an objective view of others’ “devilish support of individual rights” enumerated in the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, if one’s objectivity depends on a particular sacred text as one’s “objective” dogma? Is a “Luciferian” a real thing, or a political or social tactic to demonize & persecute people? Does insisting the U.S. must have no establishment of religion make one a “Luciferian”? (Would that then make our 250th Anniversary Founding Fathers -- Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, & Ben Franklin, our 1st Amendment’s authors & implementers -- demon-possessed?)
At 7-9 pm CDT Mo 6/15/26 by Zoom we'll reasoningly share our diverse or even disparate worldviews on how many times we’ve called others “Luciferians” or been called by others “Luciferian” -- and what we thought they, or we, meant by using that name. Meanwhile, our reasoning dialogue’s agreements of open-mindedness, acceptance, curiosity, discovery, sincerity, brevity, & confidentiality should help us throw more light than shade on this question!
