Ottumwa, Iowa passed a rule allowing religious invocations at city council meetings; a former council member and practicing Satanist then delivered one, triggering an argument over how to undo the 'curse.'
Ottumwa is a small town in Iowa. On January 20 its city council passed a resolution: meetings may now open with a religious invocation. Only one member voted against it, Cara Galloway, and she said at the time that Satanists might actually turn up and read one.
On Tuesday night, they did. Matt Dalbey, a former council member and a Satanist, took the podium and read a prayer used by the Satanic Temple of Iowa: asking the 'dark father' that people stand unbowed by stale doctrine, holding only to what can be shown to be true. It ended with 'It is done. Hail Satan.'
Then came the attempt to reverse the curse
A pastor named Rick Bick rushed to the podium, calling the prayer a curse laid on the city that had to be undone at once. He asked for thirty seconds of silent prayer. The mayor, Benjamin Foote, agreed to a moment of silence; Galloway kept her head up and her arms crossed.
An hour later Galloway explained herself: opening with an invocation means allowing views you do not share, and once anyone is permitted to respond, the taxpayers end up footing the bill for the fight. This was exactly what she had worried about.
Dalbey calls himself a constitutionalist. He spent eight years on the council and stayed out of local politics after leaving in 2021, until the new rule arrived and he decided to sign up. The booking form asks which organisation you represent; he wrote 'none' all three times. He is scheduled again for November 3 and says he will be there.
Nor is this isolated. In 2016 a Christian nativity scene went up at the state capitol, and atheists soon installed one honouring the Bill of Rights. In 2023 the Satanic Temple raised a red-ribbon pentagram in the rotunda; a man vandalised it and was charged with a hate crime. In 2024 the governor signed a religious freedom law, and officials then blocked the Satanists' winter celebration. The ACLU has sued the state over it.
Why it matters
A prayer before the meeting looks like a nod to tradition, but it opens a door anyone may walk through: hand the room to religion and the first one in may not be the one you had in mind. Either everyone gets to speak, or nobody does — the middle path does not hold.
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