The Devil’s
Advocate Scholarship
The mission of The Satanic Temple (TST) is to encourage benevolence and empathy, reject tyrannical authority, advocate common sense, oppose injustice, and undertake noble pursuits. Our efforts have involved championing religious pluralism, protecting free-thought, and ensuring the fundamental rights of our members are protected.
The Satanic Temple advocates the protection of bodily autonomy and the pursuit of knowledge. TST views intellectual exploration as a critical component of individual fulfillment. Often, however, people confuse learning with schooling. While learning involves a self-directed approach to better one's understanding of things, schooling involves the imposition of an oppressive hierarchical structure that demands obedience to authority first and foremost and determines what knowledge should be disseminated and how it should be imparted. Compulsory schooling violates the fundamental civil rights of the children who are forced to attend. Schooling requires that students endure chronic stress along with a profound degree of tedium and boredom such that empathy is diminished, and depression and anxiety often ensue.
TST is proud to host for the third year in a row our Devil’s Advocate Scholarship that awards students who champion individualism, free-thought, empathy, and other noble aspects of TST's mission to better society. We also have expanded our submission categories to encompass a wide variety of learners.
TST will award three scholarships, each worth $666. One does NOT have to be a TST member to apply for this scholarship. There are three categories: age 11 and under, ages 12-18, and 2022 high school or GED graduates and continuing education learners. Continuing education learners are learners who are pursuing some sort of educational pursuit, traditional and nontraditional alike, after compulsory education. There is no age restriction. Each educational category will respond to the same submission prompt.
How has Satanism inspired you to make the world a better place?
A submission to the prompt may take any creative form that the applicant desires, such as a written submission or an audio/visual submission. The following are examples of submission media, although this is not an exhaustive list.
- Written: essays, poems, short stories, open letters
- Audio/Visual: drawings, paintings, short films, songs
Rules
- Written works should not exceed 500 words in length.
- Film projects and recordings should not exceed 3 minutes in length.
- A high-quality photo of any physical art piece will be accepted.
- Only one submission per applicant will be accepted.
- All work must be original and the sole creation of the person submitting.
- With certain tax restraints that the IRS places on nonprofit scholarship programs, all applicants must be permanent residents of the United States.
- One does not have to be a member of TST to apply.
Applications for this scholarship will be accepted from July 31, 2022, at 12 AM EDT until August 27, 2022, at 11:59 PM EDT. Applications submitted after this specified date will not be considered.
One applicant from each age category will be chosen. In other words, TST will be awarding three scholarships in total. Winners will be chosen by TST’s Scholarship Committee. Each winner will be awarded $666.
One does not have to be a TST member in order to apply for this scholarship. Applicants will only be judged on how their submission exemplifies the TST’s mission and the prompt they were asked to answer.
Winners will be announced in mid-September, 2022. While TST will do its best to protect the anonymity of every applicant, any and all submissions may, at TST’s discretion, be published on TST's website, TST’s social media accounts, TST’s press releases, and any other medium published by TST directly or indirectly.
The link to the "Start My Application" button will be available starting July 31st.
The Satanic Temple
64 Bridge St.
Salem, MA 01970
scholarship@thesatanictemple.com
If you need further information, only emails will be accepted.
Questions about eligibility will not be considered. See above for eligibility requirements.
