Iowa city council erupts after starting with satanic prayer: A curse put on the city

An Iowa city council meeting erupted into an awkward tizzy Tuesday when an attendee took the podium to read a satanic prayer — prompting outrage from a watching pastor who demanded the “curse” placed on his city be lifted immediately.“Dear dark father” and “Hail Satan” were the words that kicked off the Ottumwa City Council’s first meeting this month after former member Matt Dalbey stepped up to read its regular invocation.“Let us embrace the Luciferianian impulse to eat at the tree of knowledge,” Dalbey said.“Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions not their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations.”Some in the standing crowd behind him appeared to look on perplexed as Dalbey continued, while at least one person promptly dropped to his seat.

When Dalbey was done, the council members faced the American flag without a word to recite the pledge of allegiance.But a pastor in the audience wasn’t having it — he headed straight for the podium Dalbey had just left and demanded everyone gathered in the room “reverse this curse that was put on our city.”“That ‘Hail Satan’ is not welcome here,” New Life Center pastor Rick Bick told the council, footage from the Ottumwa Courier shows.“It needs to be done now,” he said after council members told him to wait until the meeting’s public comment section.“I appreciate what Ms.

Galloway is saying, but that was a curse put on the city,” Bick said.“Most of you know that, and we need to just stop and reverse it.”Ottumwa Mayor Benjamin Foote then announced there would be 30 seconds of silence “to reflect on whatever it is we need to reflect on at this time” — and after city council members tried to move the meeting along, the mayor butted back and the silence continued.The meeting proceeded, but not before Council Member Cara Galloway raised her concerns about recent legislation that had allowed Dalbey to recite the satanic pra...