The Freedom From Religion Foundation is again urging an Iowa city council to end a divisive practice after a satanic invocation was disrupted for the second consecutive month.
Former City Council Member Matt Dalbey, a member of the Satanic Temple of Iowa, delivered an invocation at the Nov. 3 City Council meeting emphasizing religious liberty, freedom of expression, individual dignity and respect for differing beliefs. But when Dalbey concluded with “Hail Satan,” Jeremy Herrell began loudly reciting the Lord’s Prayer in an apparent attempt to drown him out. Herrell was eventually escorted from the chambers by police. The incident came just one month after a Christian pastor interrupted proceedings following Dalbey’s first invocation, demanding that the City Council “reverse the curse” he claimed Dalbey had placed on the city. Mayor Benjamin Foote accommodated the pastor’s objections by calling for a moment of silence.
In a follow-up letter after the second confrontation, FFRF is asking the Ottumwa City Council to reconsider its policy of opening meetings with religious invocations. FFRF had written to the council in October, warning that its response to Dalbey’s invocation raised serious constitutional concerns and urging it to abandon the practice altogether. Unfortunately, the latest disruption only reinforces those concerns.
“The council has now experienced two consecutive meetings overshadowed by religious controversy,” writes FFRF Legal Counsel Chris Line in the new letter. “What should have been routine proceedings devoted to the business of governing instead became confrontations over religious beliefs.”
FFRF reminds the City Council that the Supreme Court has made clear that legislative invocation practices must be administered without discrimination against minority religions and nonreligion. If the city insists on hosting religious invocations, it must ensure that speakers are treated equally and that disruptions are promptly addressed.
The latest controversy prompted City Council Member Cara Galloway to renew her suggestion that the council replace invocations with a moment of silence, an alternative FFRF considers acceptable.
“Nothing is more divisive than religion in government proceedings,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “And consider how arrogant it is for supplicants to imagine a deity, if it existed, is concerned about the inner workings of Ottumwa city meetings. City Council members who feel the need for divine guidance over sewers, liquor licenses and variances are free to pray privately to themselves or stop at the house of worship of their choice to and from meetings. They can pray on their own time and dime.”
Therefore, FFRF is renewing its request that the Ottumwa City Council discontinue invocations entirely and focus on the secular business of governing.
“The residents of Ottumwa deserve a government focused on serving their community, not refereeing religious disputes,” FFRF’s letter concludes. “The simplest way to accomplish that is to leave prayer to individuals and religious institutions and leave governing to the City Council.”
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.
