FFRF urges Iowa city to end divisive prayer after satanic controversy
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling on an Iowa city council to end its practice of opening meetings with religion after its mayor allowed a pastor to counter a satanic invocation.
As FFRF points out, the controversy shows why governmental prayer is inappropriate. In a letter sent Friday to Ottumwa Mayor Benjamin Foote and the City Council, the state/church watchdog criticizes the city’s response to an invocation delivered by former City Council member Matt Dalbey, a member of the Satanic Temple of Iowa, at the council’s Oct. 6 meeting.
Dalbey delivered the invocation under a policy adopted by the council in January that allows individuals of diverse religious and nonreligious perspectives to participate. His remarks encouraged reason, knowledge, truth, individual autonomy and freedom from arbitrary authority. He urged those present to judge individuals by their actions rather than their adherence to religious conventions. Dalbey also invoked the “Luciferian impulse” to seek knowledge and concluded his remarks with “Hail Satan.”
Shortly afterward, New Life Center Pastor Rick Bick approached the microphone without being recognized and demanded that the council “reverse the curse” he claimed Dalbey had placed upon the city. Bick insisted that the satanic invocation was unwelcome and called for an immediate religious response.
Council member Cara Galloway tried to maintain order, explaining that Bick could express his objections during the public comment portion of the meeting. But Mayor Foote overruled her, interrupting official proceedings to accommodate the pastor’s demands. Foote initially called for a 30-second “time of prayer” response, then changed his request to a “moment of silence.” The mayor later doubled down in comments to Fox News Digital, saying Dalbey’s invocation did not represent the community.
“This is not a reflection of our community,” Foote said. “As the mayor of my hometown in Iowa, I know the people of Ottumwa, and the invocation read at the start of Tuesday’s meeting does not represent the faith or the values of families who call this city home.”
FFRF highlights the shortcomings of such a perspective.
“Government officials cannot invite citizens of diverse religious and nonreligious perspectives to deliver invocations and then permit one religious group to effectively veto or ‘correct’ an invocation simply because it does not conform to their preferred theology,” writes FFRF Legal Counsel Christopher Line.
FFRF strongly objects to the mayor’s suggestion that minority religious beliefs or nonbelief somehow fall outside the values of his community.
“The mayor does not speak for the religious beliefs of every Ottumwa resident, nor does he have the authority to declare that minority religious or nonreligious perspectives fall outside the community’s values,” FFRF’s letter states.
FFRF clarifies that the Satanic Temple is a nontheistic religious organization whose members do not believe in a literal Satan. Its invocation expressed philosophical principles, not an attempt to “curse” the city.
While the city subsequently issued a statement acknowledging that it cannot discriminate among invocation speakers and does not necessarily endorse the religious messages delivered at its meetings, FFRF calls attention to how the council’s actual conduct contradicted its professed commitment to religious neutrality.
FFRF reminds the City Council the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that legislative prayer practices cannot discriminate against minority religions. In Town of Greece v. Galloway, the court upheld a legislative prayer practice in part because the town welcomed invocation speakers of different religious perspectives, including atheists. The court emphasized that government bodies must maintain a “policy of nondiscrimination” and avoid “aversion or bias … against minority faiths.”
The controversy exposes problems with the city’s invocation policy itself. Resolution No. 18-2026 describes invocations as an opportunity to “include our Creator into our decision-making,” language that presumes a shared belief in a creator and suggests religion should influence official government decisions. Galloway, the lone vote against adopting the invocation policy, had warned that opening meetings with religious exercises would inevitably require accommodating perspectives that some residents found objectionable. Following the Oct. 6 controversy, Galloway reiterated her concerns.
“Opening with an invocation means allowing viewpoints that may not reflect our own,” she said. “And responding to someone’s invocation is a slippery slope to putting a financial liability on the taxpayers and allowing for others to object or respond.”
FFRF commends Galloway for recognizing that religious neutrality requires protecting unpopular beliefs, not merely those favored by the majority.
“This entire controversy demonstrates exactly why government meetings should not begin with religious rituals,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Government is supposed to serve everyone, not referee theological disputes. City council members who feel the need to pray about liquor licenses, sewers and variances can pray on their own time and dime.”
FFRF is asking the Ottumwa City Council to discontinue invocations entirely and focus on the secular business of governing. The controversy was the predictable consequence of introducing religious exercises into a governmental setting, FFRF notes. FFRF has requested a written response detailing what steps the council will take to address the incident and prevent similar discriminatory treatment in the future.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with about 40,000 members nationwide, including hundreds of members in Iowa. FFRF’s purposes are to defend the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The post FFRF urges Iowa city to end divisive prayer after satanic controversy appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.
A city overtaken by Christians wanted invocations. It got “Hail Satan” instead.
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Another Satanic invocation at a city council meeting has led to right-wing backlash, mostly because supporters of the practice assumed only Christians would be delivering those prayers.
I wrote earlier this summer about how Christian Nationalists were trying to take over the town of Battle Ground, Washington—just north of Portland, Oregon. Basically, the wealthy right-wing business owners of Maddox, an electrical equipment company, were buying up properties all over the place, claiming they were doing so to help revitalize the area. But in doing so, they were effectively making it impossible for anyone to stand in their way if they disagreed with how the owners were reimagining the city. Hell, they took over the local newspaper, too.
Those owners, including Maddox CEO Camden Spiller, are connected to Christian Nationalist pastor Doug Wilson, which makes all of this even more concerning.
One Maddox manager was elected mayor. The deputy mayor was married to another Maddox employee. Another person tied to the company was on the public school board. And another manager, who co-hosted a podcast with a prominent local pastor, said their show was “an experiment in Christian localism,” talking about how they wanted to control as much as they could in Battle Ground. (Reporter Erik Neumann of Oregon Public Broadcasting has done extensive reporting on all of this.)
Back in May, the city council considered adding religious invocations to the starts of their meetings. In August, it became a reality. As writer Brian Kaylor notes, at the meeting when they considered a formal resolution, one pastor even said during the public comments that an “invocation prayer at the beginning of each council meeting will be a blessing. I know because the Bible tells us so.”
So the city passed a resolution allowing invocations prayers—it was a 5-1 vote—and said speakers would be chosen on a “rotating, first-come, first-served basis.” Speakers would only be allowed to give those invocations once a year and anyone who wanted a slot could schedule it by calling the City Manager or filling out an online form. The only rules were that the invocations had to be under three minutes, the message had to be “positive and uplifting,” and speakers could not “denigrate any other faiths or beliefs, including nonbelievers, threaten damnation, proselytize, or preach conversion.”
If the goal was to avoid any lawsuits, they seemed to check all the boxes. I have to assume they thought only Christians would sign up to do the honors.
Instead, the first person to sign up was a Satanist.
That invocation was delivered this week by Bast Sekhmet of The Satanic Temple:
MAYOR: We welcome Bast Sekhmet of The Satanic Temple to present an invocation this evening.
…
SEKHMET: Good evening, and on behalf of the Satanic Temple, we thank you for this opportunity and look forward to doing this again next year.
This invocation today was inspired by the Seven Tenets or ethical principles of The Satanic Temple… a non-theistic organization that believes in compassion, empathy, justice, autonomy, freedom of speech, scientifically based beliefs, accountability, and wisdom.
Let us begin.
Let us never bow our heads or bend the knee in obeisance to any faith from the past that is based on ignorant, bigoted savagery.
Let us not look back with reverence to dark times of fearful minds, unenlightened by modern scientific knowledge, but move forward with critical thinking, the only way to determine actual, factual truth.
Let us not fear the tree of knowledge but extend our grasp and devour its fruit.
Let us make rational decisions rather than imposing outdated authoritarian religious doctrine with varied interpretations, some more vile than others.
Let us cast out harmful ideas that threaten individual autonomy and our collective rights to liberty, life, and the pursuit of happiness, which must necessarily include free thought and freedom of expression, especially of our very identity.
Let us bravely face the truth rather than hide behind comforting delusion. Because regardless whether a Supreme Being really exists, history will be our judge.
So let us embrace those among us who understand that morality, compassion, and service to others do not require devotion to any faith of ancient doctrine.
Let us recognize that humans are capable of choosing kindness, empathy, and helping those in need, regardless of any religious faith.
Finally, let us trust in ourselves and others working with us to know what is best for us and our families and not force conformity to mistaken beliefs of the past.
Hail Satan, the archetype or symbol of the bringer of knowledge and hail thyself.
Thank you.
Beautifully done. Inspiring message. And a slap in the face to anyone who assumed only Christians would be signing up for the opportunity.
Last night, I had a chance to chat with Bast about the whole situation, and she told me she actually had no intention of being the first invocation speaker at all. She had seen a post on Reddit about the policy getting passed and commenters saying how funny it would be if a Satanist signed up to speak.
Bast, a newer member of The Satanic Temple, figured she might as well step up.
She reached out to members of the group in Washington to see if anyone else was interested in doing it, but as a resident of Clark County, where Battle Ground is located, she turned out to be the best option.
So she followed the protocol and reached out to city officials. Eventually, she was asked which date would be a good fit, and she chose October 5, not realizing that would be the inaugural invocation.
In terms of what she wanted to say, she remembered that YouTuber Aron Ra had delivered an invocation in Las Vegas (complete with devil horns!) earlier this year. She reached out to him to see if she could use his speech, and he gave her permission to do so. (She modified it a bit, but it’s mostly identical.)
When she arrived at the city council meeting, Bast brought along some support, but she was pleasantly surprised by how professional everyone was. Even the mayor shook her hand before the meeting began to make sure he was pronouncing her name correctly.
That night and even the next morning, no one even seemed to notice anything had happened. There was no chatter online about it, much less any backlash. Bast said that was the ideal outcome. In a way, it meant her Satanic invocation was so uncontroversial, it was basically normalized.
When comments finally appeared online, they were mostly from left-leaning supporters who were thrilled to see this kind of invocation. It was only after that when conservative zealots online—the ones who don’t understand how an open-door invocation policy works—began complaining about how a Satanist got included in the mix.
Bast told me that those comments were frustrating only because they seemed to focus on the Satanism of it all. They paid attention to the words “Hail Satan” and what she looked like, rather than the substance of anything she said. “They didn’t listen to the invocation at all,” she told me.
She did have some indirect support from one prominent local politician, though. State Senator Adrian Cortes, a former Battle Ground mayor himself, made a backhanded joke that when he left the city council to join the legislature, he “never imagined the city would go to hell in a handbasket. But judging by what’s happening under the current mayor’s leadership, it looks like that’s exactly where we’re headed.”
As I’ve said before, though, this should be expected. If you want invocations, and you have a legal policy that’s open to everyone, then you’re bound to hear from members of non-Christian and non-theistic groups. If you don’t like that, there’s a simple solution: End the practice and just get to work instead of wasting this time.
There’s no indication Battle Ground is reversing its policy. That means they should expect more “Hail Satans” than they ever bargained for. Even in a city that’s being overtaken by Christians, there are plenty of people who don’t share those beliefs.
Get used to it.
