Ottumwa, Iowa, City Council Opens Meeting With Invocation Ending In ‘Hail Satan’

OTTUMWA, Iowa — A city council meeting in southeast Iowa opened Tuesday night with an invocation addressed to a “dark father” that closed with the words “Hail Satan,” prompting an immediate demand from a local pastor that officials reverse what he called a curse on the city.

Matthew Dalbey, a resident, former council member and member of the Satanic Temple of Iowa, delivered the remarks after Mayor Benjamin Foote called the Oct. 6 regular meeting to order and invited those who wished to participate to stand.

“Let us pray. Dear dark father, let us stand now unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds in darkened times,” Dalbey said, according to the city’s official recording. He urged the room to “embrace the luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge,” to judge people by “concrete actions” rather than “arbitrary social norms,” and to hold “only to that which is demonstrably true.” He finished: “It is done. Hail Satan.”

The Pledge of Allegiance followed immediately.

The invocation was permitted under a policy the council adopted Jan. 20 by a 4-1 vote. Resolution No. 18-2026 opens the pre-meeting slot to any Ottumwa resident who requests a date, and states that the practice is meant to reflect “the diversity of both organized and unorganized religious denominations, as well as other faiths, belief systems, or the lack thereof.” The city’s published schedule lists Dalbey, organization “None,” for Oct. 6 and again for Nov. 3.

Council member Cara Galloway cast the lone vote against the policy. At the end of Tuesday’s meeting, she said she had warned colleagues months earlier that the rule would allow exactly this.

“This is exactly why I had concerns about having an invocation when we first talked about it, and I think I specifically referenced that having someone from the church of Satan or a prayer about Satan… that this could happen and we would need to allow it,” Galloway said. She added that the council should remain neutral and that responding to an invocation risks “putting a financial liability on the taxpayers.”

Pastor Rick Bick of the New Life Center did not wait for the public-comment period. After the pledge, he told the council the remarks needed to be answered at once.

“Let’s just reverse this curse that was put on our city. That ‘Hail Satan’ is not welcome here,” Bick said. “That was a curse put on the city… and we need to just stop and reverse it. It needs to be done now.”

Galloway objected that the request was out of order. Foote overruled her and called for a 30-second moment of silence “to reflect on whatever it is we need to reflect on at this time.” Galloway again urged the council to move on to the consent agenda. The mayor proceeded with the silence.

Dalbey later told the Ottumwa Courier that the text is used by the Satanic Temple of Iowa, of which he is a member, “but has nothing to do with the belief in a satanic deity.” The group describes itself as non-theistic.

City Administrator Philip Rath said Wednesday on a local radio program that the open policy creates a “vacuum” but also shields the city from legal challenges. “You have to be open to allow people to express their different beliefs,” Rath said. He added that narrowing the rule “could open it up for a potential suit down the road.”

The official meeting video had been viewed thousands of times by Wednesday morning, and clips circulated widely on social media. Critics framed the episode as evidence that a nondiscrimination rule written to broaden participation had instead put a satanic invocation at the front of a public meeting in a small Midwestern city. Supporters of the policy, including Galloway in her remarks after the fact, said the alternative is viewpoint discrimination the city cannot lawfully practice.

Dalbey remains scheduled to give the invocation again on Nov. 3.