A city council meeting in Iowa is going viral after it erupted into chaos following a resident opening the meeting with a prayer to Satan. Just before the Ottumwa City Council started their usual meeting, a former member, Matt Dalbey, opened by invoking the “dark father” to “embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat from the tree of knowledge” before closing out with a “Hail Satan.”
After the council said the Pledge of Allegiance and took roll, New Life Center Pastor Rick Bick stood up and interrupted the meeting to pushback against Dalbey’s sick and twisted invocation. “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 told the council.
Cara Galloway, a City Council Member, told the pastor to withhold comment until it was time for public discussion, but Bick wasn’t having it. “It needs to be done now,” he said. “I appreciate what Ms. Galloway is saying, but that was a curse put on the city. When he said ‘Hail Satan’ … most of you know that, and we need to just stop and reverse it.”
According to a report from Fox News, Ottumwa Mayor Benjamin Foote then requested 30 seconds of silence to allow for prayer and reflection, overruling Galloway’s attempt to move forward with the meeting. Foote spoke with Fox and issued a response to the controversy, saying, “This is not a reflection of our community. As the mayor of my hometown in Iowa, I know the people of Ottumwa, and the invocation read at the start of Tuesday’s meeting does not represent the faith or the values of families who call this city home.”
After the meeting drew to a close, Galloway provided additional comments on the situation, repeating past concerns she had about establishing invocations at city council meetings that could potentially open the door to more future conflicts. Galloway essentially appealed to the separation of church and state as justification for not having invocations prior to meetings.
“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 explained. “And this is exactly why I had concerns about having an invocation when we first talked about it.”
“And I think I even 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. I just want to remind us that again, sometimes things are said that we may not agree with … and while you’re allowed to do the moment of silence and that kind of thing too, I think we’ve opened ourselves up for others to object or respond to others’ invocations,” she continued.
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“And we need to remember that we are up here to be neutral and allow viewpoints because we’ve opened up invocations,” Galloway concluded. A report from local media outlet The Ottumwa Courier said that the city officially adopted an invocation policy in January 2026. The policy does not officially endorse any faith or religious denomination.
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video