Did Iowa City Council Open With a Satanic Prayer? Video Shows Clash Between Pastor and Officials
Did an Iowa city council meeting open with a satanic prayer? Yes; former Ottumwa councilman Matt Dalbey read an invocation ending with 'Hail Satan' on Tuesday under the city's open prayer policy. The incident prompted Pastor Rick Bick to break protocol and demand the council 'reverse this curse,' leading the mayor to call a 30-second silence amid debate.
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. The confrontation occurred at City Hall during the Ottumwa City Council’s regular session on October 6.
“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, NYT reported. The incident unfolded under a municipal invocation policy adopted earlier this year, setting off immediate procedural disputes and public pushback inside the chamber.
Did Iowa City Council Open With a Satanic Prayer?
Pastor Breaks City Council Protocols to Remove Curse After Satanic Temple Invocation https://t.co/sDJG7WgCmy
— JD Rucker (@JDRucker) October 7, 2026
Former Council Member Invokes Luciferian Theme
“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.
Pastor Breaks Council Protocols to Demand Curse Removal
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.
Legal Debate Over Municipal Prayer Policy
The meeting proceeded, but not before Council Member Cara Galloway raised her concerns about recent legislation that had allowed Dalbey to recite the satanic prayer.
She was referring to a January-approved invocation policy which stated prayers or statements from any faith or philosophy would be allowed to open Ottumwa’s city council meetings — which Galloway argued would be a “slippery slope” towards controversy.
“I think we’ve opened ourselves up for others to object or respond to others’ invocations, and we need to remember that we are up here to be neutral,” Galloway said at the meeting’s close.
“I think I specifically referenced that having someone from the church of Satan or a prayer about Satan when we talked about that, that this could happen and we would need to allow it,” she added. Galloway was the only council member to vote against the measure when it passed in January, according to the Ottumwa Courier.
The Satanic Temple's Non-Theistic Stance
Dalbey stood by his satanic prayer afterwards, telling the outlet he was a member of the Satanic Temple of Iowa, “but has nothing to do with the belief in a satanic deity.”
Despite its frightening name and rhetoric, the Satanic Temple of Iowa describes itself as “resolutely non-theistic.” That’s in line with most predominant Satanic churches, which don’t worship Lucifer as a dark god but are more devoted to individualism and personal freedoms.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 08, 2026 09:51 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
