Small-town Iowa still opens its public meetings the old-fashioned way, with a word of prayer.

But the city council in Ottumwa let somebody new take the microphone.

And what he called down on the town sent one pastor straight out of his seat.

A Former Councilman Brought Something Darker Than a Prayer to Ottumwa

Ottumwa sits in the southeast corner of Iowa. It’s a river town of farm families, factory hands, and church pews that still fill up most Sunday mornings.

Matt Dalbey used to sit on the city council there. At a recent meeting, he came back to the front of the room as the man delivering the invocation.

Dalbey didn’t pray to the God most folks in Ottumwa grew up with. According to Fox News, he addressed his words to the “dark father,” urged listeners to “embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat from the tree of knowledge,” and wrapped it all up with “Hail Satan.”

And then the council stood, recited the Pledge of Allegiance, and called the roll as if nothing had happened.

Pastor Rick Bick of New Life Center wasn’t about to let it slide.

He interrupted the proceedings and told the council it needed to undo what Dalbey had just done.

“Let’s just reverse this curse that was put on our city. That ending with ‘Hail Satan’ or ‘Hail dark god,’ that’s not welcome here,” Bick said.

Council Member Cara Galloway told the pastor to hold his remarks for the public comment period. Bick refused to wait.

“It needs to be done now,” Bick said. He told the room the invocation amounted to a curse on the city, and he kept pressing. “When he said ‘Hail Satan’ . . . most of you know that, and we need to just stop and reverse it.”

Mayor Benjamin Foote stepped in. He overruled Galloway, halted the agenda, and gave the room 30 seconds of silence for prayer or reflection.

Ottumwa’s Mayor Drew a Line While One Council Member Fretted About Liability

Foote later told Fox News Digital the invocation didn’t speak for his hometown. He said he knows “the people of Ottumwa,” and that the words from the podium did “not represent the faith or the values of families who call this city home.”

That’s a mayor who reads his town right.

But Galloway saw it differently. After the meeting wrapped up, she reminded colleagues she had warned about this exact scenario when the council first debated invocations. She even recalled raising the possibility of a prayer to Satan back then.

“Opening with an invocation means allowing viewpoints that may not reflect our own, and responding to someone’s invocation is a slippery slope to putting a financial liability on the taxpayers and allowing for others to object or respond,” Galloway said.

She added that council members sit up there “to be neutral and allow viewpoints because we’ve opened up invocations.”

Her worry pointed in an odd direction. The man who hailed the devil from a government podium barely registered. The pastor who objected, and the price tag of anyone answering back, got the attention.

Council Member Bill Hoffman took a third road. He walked out when the invocation started and came back for the Pledge.

“I’m a Christian man with Christian values. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to observe his First Amendment right. It just means that I want to use my rights not to observe that,” Hoffman told Fox News Digital.

Fair enough. And Hoffman also said he expects the council to revisit the invocation policy, adding that the council does not condone what Dalbey said.

Dalbey belongs to the Satanic Temple of Iowa, according to the Ottumwa Courier. In a private message the paper reported, he said the temple commonly uses the prayer, which “has nothing to do with the belief in a satanic deity.”

So he hailed a being he says he doesn’t believe in. At a government meeting. In front of a room full of people who do believe. Folks in Ottumwa can draw their own conclusions about the point of that exercise.

Iowa’s Satan Stunt Won’t Be the Last One Aimed at a Christian Town

Here’s the backstory that matters. The Ottumwa council adopted its invocation policy in January, per the Courier. The policy disclaims endorsing any faith and says it exists to show “respect for the diversity of both organized and unorganized religious denominations, as well as other faiths, belief systems, or the lack thereof” in the city.

That sounds harmless on paper. But in practice it handed a microphone to anyone with a grudge against the faith that built the town.

And the Satanic Temple knows how to work that kind of opening. The group has spent years showing up wherever local governments allow public prayer and demanding its turn. In 2016, the Phoenix City Council scrapped its opening prayer entirely and switched to a moment of silence rather than hand the podium to the Satanists.

That’s the play. Push until the Christians either share the stage with Lucifer or quit praying in public altogether. Either outcome suits the people pushing.

The US Supreme Court upheld opening prayers at government meetings in Town of Greece v. Galloway back in 2014. The justices recognized something the founders took for granted. Americans have opened public business with prayer since the Continental Congress, and those prayers went to the God of the Bible.

America didn’t stumble into that habit. A Christian people built this country on Christian principles, and the founders saw no conflict between public prayer and liberty.

Free speech still matters here, and nobody should pretend otherwise. Dalbey can believe what he wants and say what he wants on his own time. The First Amendment protects him. It protects Pastor Bick too, along with every Ottumwa resident who found the stunt repulsive.

But a council invocation isn’t a street corner. The city opens that moment under its own policy, and the council gets to decide what the moment means. A body that wants to honor its community’s faith can say so plainly. One that wants a lawyer-proof free-for-all shouldn’t act surprised when somebody uses it to curse the town.

Maybe the fix is a moment of silence. Maybe it’s a policy that invites local clergy to lead. Hard to say yet, and the council itself doesn’t seem sure.

What’s easier to say is this. Christians in places like Ottumwa keep hearing that they should stay neutral, stay quiet, and save it for public comment. The other side never seems to get the same lecture.

Expect more of these. Once one city council blinks, the Satanic Temple tends to show up at the next one.

But in one Iowa river town, a pastor stood up, a mayor backed him, and a room full of neighbors bowed their heads for 30 seconds. That counts for something.

Sources: Fox News, “Iowa city council meeting erupts after former member opens meeting with satanic prayer and ‘Hail Satan'”; The Ottumwa Courier, as cited by Fox News.