One Iowa pastor must be lauded for taking a stand after a Satanist offered a “prayer” to open a town council meeting Tuesday.
The Ottumwa Courier reported that resident and former council member Matt Dalbey, dressed in black, read a satanic prayer to start the Ottumwa City Council meeting, saying, “Dear Dark Father, let us stand now, unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds and darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of 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 their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations,” he continued.
He concluded, “It is done. Hail Satan.”
Presumably, the “It is done” pronouncement was intended to mock Jesus’ last words spoken from the cross, “It is finished.” In other words, Christ announced that his substitutionary death paid for the sins of mankind, and therefore death, hell, and the devil had been defeated.
A city council meeting takes an unexpected turn after a Satanic prayer prompted another man to stand up and call for the curse on the city to be reversed. https://t.co/H2vs1eIH9Q
— The Western Journal (@WesternJournalX) October 8, 2026
Should Ottumwa reconsider its policy on opening council meetings to prayers from all faiths?
Yes, it needs updating
25% (5 votes)
No, the current policy is fine
5% (1 vote)
It should only allow Christian prayers
70% (14 votes)
Interestingly, the next item on the council members’ agenda was placing their hands on their hearts and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, which ends, “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
As I explained in my book, “We Hold These Truths: The Two Beliefs That Still Hold the Power to Transform the Nation and the World,” the phrase “under God” was added to the pledge in 1954 after then-President Dwight Eisenhower heard a sermon at the Washington, D.C., church Abraham Lincoln attended during the Civil War.
During his remarks, the Presbyterian minister emphasized the importance of the two words, “under God,” in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, particularly as the nation faced down godless communism in the 1950s.
After the sermon, Eisenhower told the preacher, “I agree entirely.”
Soon thereafter, “under God” was added to the pledge, and the president observed after he signed the bill into law that millions of schoolchildren would daily proclaim “the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty” and be reminded of our country’s “true meaning,” and “in this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource, in peace or in war.”
Three locations, three General Dwight Eisenhower statues: his presidential museum in Abilene, Kansas; West Point, New York; and the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Eisenhower, as president, supported adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, observing that millions of schoolchildren would from then on be reminded of our country’s “true meaning,” reaffirming “the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future” and thereby “strengthen[ing] those spiritual weapons which will forever be our country’s most powerful resource, in peace or in war.”
Learn more and read a sample of my book “We Hold These Truths” here: https://t.co/YIYukdoUNn
— Randy DeSoto (@RandyDeSoto) October 4, 2026
After the Ottumwa Council recited the Pledge of Allegiance Tuesday, resident Rick Bick, pastor of New Life Center, rose to address the council members and the town mayor.
“Let’s just reverse that curse that was just put on our city, that ending with ‘Hail [Satan]’ and hail dark god. That’s not welcome here,” Bick said.
Council member Cara Galloway objected, saying that Bick was speaking out of order, because the resident comments normally come at the end of the meeting.
“It needs to be done now,” Bick fired back. “I appreciate what Ms. Galloway is saying, but that was a curse put on the city… Most of you know that, and we need to just stop and reverse it.”
Mayor Benjamin Foote declared a 30-second moment of silence would be appropriate “to reflect on whatever it is we need to reflect on at this time,” but again, Galloway objected, saying, “It was time to move forward.”
The mayor overruled her, and a moment of silence was observed.
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City administrator Philip Rath addressed the controversy on KBIZ’s “Dialogue” show Wednesday morning, saying Ottumwa, located 85 miles southeast of Des Moines, had adopted a new policy in January, which opened the invocation up to participants from other faiths besides Christianity, according to the Ottumwa Courier.
“I don’t know what’s on Mr. Dalbey’s heart, but that’s part of what happens when you have an open policy like this,” Rath said. “You have to be open to allow people to express their different beliefs.”
The policy could be revisited, he added, but doing so might open the city up to lawsuits.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 2014 case Town of Greece v. Galloway that the town council did not violate the First Amendment “by opening its meetings with prayer that comports with our tradition and does not coerce participation by nonadherents.”
Our tradition is rooted in Christianity, not Satanism, so Ottumwa should go ahead and update its policy by pulling language directly from the Supreme Court’s ruling and no longer allow Dalbey to offer his “prayers.”
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