Iowa city council debates proper time in meeting agenda to “undo the curse that was just put on our city.”
An Iowa man has kicked off controversy over religious freedom in the small town of Ottumwa, Iowa by opening a city council meeting with a prayer to Satan, which then kicked off a debate about the proper time in the meeting agenda to undo the “curse.”
lol
That prayer is fire.
Dear dark father, let us stand now unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds and darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferan impulse to eat off the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old.”
Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not for their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations,” he continued. “Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all. That which will not bend must break. And that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise.”“It is done. Hail Satan,”
What’s ridiculous about it is, if any of the people who were offended actually sat down and analyzed the wording, the only thing they could reasonably object to is the “Hail Satan” at the end. Which illustrates the entire problem with Christian Nationalism. They don’t care about the content, only the branding.
No, there are religious people that object heavily to truth seeking. One must only have faith, you don’t need truth!
“They don’t care about the content, only the branding.” - Which is also the problem with Trumpism.
Not sure if the “luciferan impulse to eat off the tree of knowledge” would slide all too well
Jesus freak here and I concur. This prayer is a 10/10 no notes.
People often seem to forget that “Religious Freedom” means all religions, not just yours.
Never mind the importance of the separation of church and
skatestateI’m glad you fixed it. Some priests are not down with the separation of church and skate.
He’s going for that sweet Christ Air
Forget air fryers, let’s talk about air friars.
Amen brother
electronic music intensifies
You will literally hear dumb fuck xtians argue until they are blue in the face that what the Founders really meant to do was to merely allow you to choose among an array of xtian sects. Maybe if you are spicy, you’ll be permitted to be Jewish, because well, Jesus was a Jew. And we will “tolerate” that.
Other xtians just seem to view “religious freedom” as “xtians get special privileges and they should be able to treat certain groups less-than if it suits them”.
And man, they’ll definitely get butthurt when you point out that the First pretty much requires that you have freedom FROM as well as freedom OF. And that “OF” means…anything, not just xtianity. I’ll be a fucking pagan on Monday, fuck you very much because of that OF, and if I please, I’ll be an atheist on Tuesday because of the FROM. Because that’s real religious freedom.
Thanks for your opinion, Charles Darwin
How was that even a prayer. Bro just urged everyone to act based on evidence instead of superstition.
In American that can be considered very controversial.
Hai America
Sometimes, just sometimes, I really… really hate autocorrect.
Around here, “evolution” and atheism are considered religions. I have personally heard people preach against “those who worship at the altars of science”.
What did the council think “religious freedom” meant? They should be blessed it wasn’t a Scientology rhetoric or symbolic narrative.
Now that would be highly demonic and inhumane.
Well, there’s Cathartic, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, New Calvinist, Presbyterian, Fellowship, Chirch of Christ. Yep, I think that’s about everyone. The Muslims know to keep their heads down around here because we do this sort of thing and I think we’re ok with the Jews for now.
-The Council probably.
I can’t help but wonder at the fundies that want to insert their beliefs into the government. The separation of church and state protects the church from the state just as much as it protects the state from the church.
After all there’s no guarantee that the official state sanctioned religion couldn’t end up being Mormonism or Islam or any of thousands of other religions that you might object to. Even some of the founding fathers were deists who created the depictions of blindfolded justice and lady liberty to be new gods of America.
Even as a Christian myself, I’m glad that the satanists are there to help teach this lesson.
The number of Christian sects in the U.S. isn’t 1, isn’t 5, isn’t 10, isn’t 20. It’s more than 200. It’s very clear that Christians don’t and have never agreed with each other so it is absolutely rediculous for any Christian to think “what we believe” means all Christians. Hell there are so many people that call themselves non-denominational simply because they don’t want to claim parts of the Bible hated by others.
If we tally it up according to Christians all Christians will go to hell, which they made up.
This is also not getting into the innumerable folk branches of Christianity which basically range from Neo-Nazis to Celtic-Americans who are borderline anarchists and think all organized religions are cults.
They only want religious freedom when they’re using their religion as an excuse to infringe on other people’s rights. Hail Satan.
Hail Satan.
Hail Stan
🥉
Cthulhu fhtagn!
🥈
rAmen
🥇
Hail Satan.
Does he drive taxis? Or are you just forecasting the weather to him?
He’s got a flat rate to and from the airport
At the Tuesday night council meeting, the audience stood up to recite the Pledge of Allegiance the moment Dalbey finished.
The dubiousness of unquestioning nationalism aside, the pledge of allegiance containing ‘under god’ also makes it a religious phrase.
It’s honestly so weird. The whole ritual needs to be done away with
But without idiotic, blind patriotic fervour, what will become of 'Murica?
Won’t nobody think of the flags?!
they added the Under God part during the Red Scare to show the world that the US wasn’t a secular godless nation like the USSR at the time.
That’s also when they started putting “In God we trust” on our money. Assholes.
Even as a kid growing up in the 90s, knowing separation and state and finding it odd as fuck we had “In God this and that” in various aspects of our lives. Even my developing, super small brain could tell something didn’t add up right. 🤨️
Another citizen, a pastor named Rick Bick, rushed to the podium. “Let’s just reverse that curse that was just put on our city,” he said. “That ending with hail Satan and hail dark god. That’s not welcome here.”
“Mayor, that should be done at the end,” city councilor Cara Galloway said.
“It needs to be done now, OK.” Rick said. “I appreciate what Ms. Galloway is saying but that was a curse put on our city when he said ‘Hail Satan’ and the dark god and most of you know that. And we need to just stop and reverse it.”
“So what I’m gonna do now…I’m just gonna invite us into a 30 second time of prayer — time of silence.”
“No,” Galloway said. “We are at the consent agenda. I’m sorry, but it’s time to move forward. The invocation happened.”
“As mayor of this city…I’m going to ask right now that we do a moment of silence to reflect on whatever it is we need to reflect on at this time. And then we will move to the consent agenda,” mayor Benjamin Foote said.
I should start giving incantations, that reaction is gold.
And this is exactly why the Satanic Temple exists.
Hail Satan
I used to be a preacher, and am still a Christian. I also have given money to the Satanic Temple because the work they do is important.
Separation of church and state is good for the government, the churches, and society at large.
You’re chill, man. Keep on keepin’ on.
you can tell the real christian churches because they are active in protesting in the current time.
Mayor’s worst nightmare came true
Too tight of a schedule to cast that counter spell.
What a simple minded bumblefuck. ‘oh no, a curse’.
The ridiculous part of this whole thing is if you listen to what the guy actually said, if you get rid of the ‘dear dark father’ at the beginning and ‘hail satan’ at the end, it’s actually a pretty good invocation that SHOULD have no problem at a council meeting.
Didn’t at all sound like a curse to me, sounded like good advice for a city council.
…let us stand now unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds and darkened times. Let us embrace the … impulse to eat off the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old. Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not for their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations. Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all. That which will not bend must break. And that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise. …"
If you ignore the Lucifer stuff, it’s a damn solid invocation. Apparently that pastor dude couldn’t see past the Lucifer stuff and called this a curse.
True, but he also probably would have a problem with most of the content as well as the flavoring
Rick Bick is a party pooper. Don’t be a dick, Rick Bick.
The prayer is a common one used by the Satanic Temple of Iowa. “Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not for their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations,” he continued. “Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all. That which will not bend must break. And that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise.”“It is done. Hail Satan,” he finished.
Another citizen, a pastor named Rick Bick, rushed to the podium. “Let’s just reverse that curse that was just put on our city,” he said. “That ending with hail Satan and hail dark god. That’s not welcome here.”
Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not for their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations.
Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true.
Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all.
That which will not bend must break. And that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise.
Think about it. To me that sounds like a literal slice of heaven, especially that last line.
But this guy’s convinced it’s a curse. Either that or the
multi-syllabicbig words made him scared.Sounds like Rick Bick is thick as a fucking brick.
What do you call people who believe in Satan?
Christians*
* yes, yes, not just them, others too.
So I actually think that the government officials did about as well as they could here.
They let the person make their statement, and then someone not in the government interrupted to say they had to “undo the curse”. Official said that wasn’t in the agenda, and then the mayor said they would just pause for 30 seconds to reflect before moving on to keep things from getting off the rails.Galloway spent the moment of silence with her head up and her arms crossed. An hour later, she spoke up. “Opening with an invocation means allowing viewpoints that may not reflect our own and responding to someone’s invocation is a slippery slope to putting a financial liability on the taxpayers and allowing others to object or respond. This is exactly why I had concerns about having an invocation when we first talked about it.”
Agreed. Build the 30 seconds into future agendas. Have the religious piece (whatever it may be), then 30 seconds of silence for anyone who needs the time to get their jimmies unrustled, then move on.
Or, even better, just have the 30 seconds and tell everyone they’re invited to silently issue any invocation they want during that time, then they’re moving on to actual city business. Hell, let’s bump it up to a full minute, just to be extra nice.
Or maybe just don’t have any stupid prayers at a public meeting.
Fundies: WE DEMAND RELIGION BEING INSERTED WHERE IT DOESNT BELONG
Satanic Temple: rubs hands together excellent.
Fundies: NO WAIT NOT LIKE THAT. ONLY FOR US.
