‘Hail Satan’ Prayer At Alaska Government Meeting Sparks Controversy And Walkouts
A recent government meeting in Alaska took a turn for the strange when a Satanic Temple member won the right to open with a prayer to Satan, causing officials and attendees to run for the door. The Daily Wire reports that Alaska Superior Court ruled in favor of a new policy allowing anyone in the Kenai Peninsula Borough the right to offer an invocation, regardless of their religion.
Iris Fontana, a member of the Satanic Temple that both performed the invocation and brought the lawsuit that resulted in the policy change, began by asking for attendees to “clear their minds.”
“She asked listeners to embrace the impulse to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. ‘Let us demand that humans be judged for their actions,’ she said,” the Peninsula Clarion reported.
“That which will not bend, must break, and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared as demise. It is done, hail Satan.”
The New York Post reports that some members of the audience offered Christian prayers during public comment. In addition, Barrett Fletcher, pastor of the First Lower Peninsula Congregation of Pastafarians, urged the borough to ban invocations and “stop offending people.”
“I’m sure when I give the invocation in Homer in September, there will be people that are offended by the idea of a creator of the universe, the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, being invoked,” said Fletcher, who subscribes to the satirical religion known as Pastafarianism.
Invocation praising Satan sparks walkout among some assembly members, mayor in Alaska https://t.co/H8a4E9vVr2
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) June 21, 2019
But Kenai resident Greg Andersen has a different belief. He warned that he’d be giving the next invocation and believes that the event is an example of people that can’t accept others that have beliefs that differ from their own, adding that he’s fine with anyone walking out ?— as he witnessed during the recent case.
As The Inquisitr previously reported, the Supreme Court recently agreed to take a previously dismissed case against the state of Missouri in which Satanists sued the state for its strict abortion laws. The members of the Satanic Temple in question believe that the laws — which include requirements such as women waiting 72 hours prior to undergoing an abortion and the provision of religious literature to the patients by doctors — are religiously discriminating because they insist life begins at conception.
The result of the lawsuit has the potential to give support to other abortion rights and progressive organizations, which could use the same religious freedom argument to challenge similar laws in other states.
