The core religious activities of The Satanic Temple are carried out by two types of member group: Congregations and Campaigns. Congregations are focused on community activities and support, while Campaigns are focused on specific goals for bringing about material change in the world. Individual members of The Satanic Temple may belong to a Congregation, a Campaign, or both… or neither!

These two types of member groups—Congregations and Campaigns—constitute the bulk of our organization. Our organization rests on our members; that is why we call them pillars. They represent the two main ways that members can get involved, and operate as distinct sub-organizations within our church.

The Campaign Pillar has a more traditional, top-down administrative structure: each Campaign has a director, who are managed by the Director of Campaigns, and all operations are directly overseen by the Executive Ministry. Campaign are goal-focused, and address very specific issues relating to our mission and values. Each campaign has a mission statement that describes what it is working to accomplish, and develops activities that are directly related to materially bringing out its goal or goals.

The Congregation Pillar is largely self-governing, with different functions distributed across a collection of Committees whose members are elected on a semi-annual basis. Congregations are community-focused and empower like-minded individuals that share a common religious identity to come together for social activities, to provide support for each other, and to represent the values we share as members of The Satanic Temple through activities, projects, and good works in the community.

You will also hear the term Society of Congregations when talking about the Congregation Pillar. These terms essentially refer to the same thing, but often have slightly different connotations. The term “Congregation Pillar” is generally used to refer simply to the collection of Congregations of The Satanic Temple. The term “Society of Congregations” is most often used when talking about the system of congregations, organized into regions and governed by a set of standing committees that operate according to the Governing Policies for the Society of Congregations to ensure that congregations comply with the standards set forth by TST, to manage inter-congregation projects and activities, and to facilitate a culture that empowers our religious communities.

The Satanic Temple also has some groups are not part of either pillar, and are not pillars themselves: SatanOps, Suryan Council, Ordination Council, and Executive Ministry.