After a civic Borough Assembly meeting in Alaska was forced to change its policy about who could offer invocations or prayers at the start of a meeting, a member of the Satanic Temple began a meeting with a call to ‘Hail Satan’.
The invocation in May led to walkouts from attendees and officials, as well as protests outside the meeting.
The incident took place at the Kenia Peninsula Borough Assembly meeting in southern Alaska. Iris Fontana, a member of the Satanic Temple, was the first member of a non-traditional religion to offer the invocation at the meeting.
In the invocation, she said: ‘Let us be present in this moment, clear our minds and be free of outdated propaganda and regulations that were created by historical people who were afraid of the unknown. Let us embrace the impulse to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, so that we may let go of comforting delusions, and see the truth in the world. Let us demand that humans be judged for their actions, not their loyalty to useless social norms, labels, and categories. Let us stand firm against all authority that tries to threaten the unalienable rights of all humans. Let us cast aside our differences to use reason, logic, science, and compassion to create solutions for the greater good of our community. It is Done. Hail Satan. Thank you.’
