‘Hail Satan’: Alaskan Council Meeting Opens with Prayer to Lucifer

Kenai, Alaska

The mundanity of a local council meeting in Alaska was astonishingly broken when a decision to open up the forum to all religions resulted in a Satanist presenting the opening prayer – to Lucifer.

When the local government of Kenai Borough decided to welcome other faiths to their assemblies they probably didn’t envisage opening up their doors to the Lord of Darkness.

On Tuesday, Iris Fontana – reportedly a member of the Satanic Temple organization that views Satan as a symbol for rebellion and rational inquiry – gave the assembly invocation usually reserved for pastors. 

Meeting attendees were reminded that they did not have to participate in the opening ritual.

Assembly members stood silently in a circle while Fontana asked them to “embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge.” She then ended the surreal prayer with the words “Hail Satan.”

The tree of knowledge is a direct reference to the rebellion of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In the Genesis account the actual name of the tree was ' The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil'. Satanists deny the legitimacy of the Bible, but then don't hesitate to use, or abuse it.

While traditional Satanism may invoke well-worn images of horned beasts, cloaked figures, and fiery underground lairs, the Satanic Temple is an atheist organization. Its website explains that it does not promote evil or the belief in supernatural beings.

Yet, it worships a supernatural being! 

“The Satanic Temple holds to the basic premise that undue suffering is bad, and that which reduces suffering is good. We do not believe in symbolic ‘evil.’ We embrace blasphemy as a legitimate expression of personal independence from counter-productive traditional norms,” it states.

How can you blaspheme that which does not exist? These people are either extremely deceptive, extremely deceived, or extremely stupid, or perhaps all three.

Footage of the unorthodox assembly opening, which preceded a fairly humdrum meeting regarding a $138,000 paving project and changing a hospital boundary, has been posted on the Kenai Peninsula Borough website.

However, the excitement of a prayer to the supposedly God-banished angel has not gone down too well with some assembly members.

“I appreciate what the Assembly President’s doing with the prayer issue and trying to be fair, but I find it ironic that the prayer from the atheist wasn’t really about doing good and making good decisions,” assemblyman Dale Bagley told Radio Kenai.

He described the incident as “irritating” and questioned whether a local pastor would be allowed to make such a political statement.

Republican Representative Needs Some Serious Help

I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican; I'm an equal-opportunity critic. If you speak or behave in an asinine manner, you're fair game. Criticism is one of the best ways to help our politicians behave in a manner worthy of their position. If we are not willing to criticize our own when it's deserved, we really have no business criticizing our opponents. All should be under the same spotlight else there's no possibility of improving the political gene-pool.

Addicting Info
Congressman Don Young (R-Alaska) has a novel idea for the homelessness crisis: Feed them to the wolves. Saving an endangered species while ridding our nation’s cities of unsightly homeless people? In Republican America, apparently, that’s a win-win.

Huffington Post reports Young came up with this brilliant idea during a House Natural Resources Committee hearing during a heated argument with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. Of course he wants gray wolves removed from the endangered species list, because freedom. (???)

Young declared that the gray wolf is a “predator” and sneered:

“How many of you have got wolves in your district? None. None. Not one.”

Because, how dare liberal lawmakers with no wolves in their district demand a say in protecting our nation’s shared natural resources:

“We’ve got 79 congressmen sending you a letter, they haven’t got a damn wolf in their whole district.

You want wolves? Young’s got wolves:

“I’d like to introduce them in your district. If I introduced them in your district, you wouldn’t have a homeless problem anymore.”

The word, hypocrite, comes quickly to mind here. Rep Young criticizes his colleagues for protecting grey wolves while they don't actually have any grey wolves in their districts, and then proceeds to tell them how to get rid of their homeless problem, while he doesn't have a homeless problem - not because of the wolves, but because Alaska is too cold for homeless people to survive. That's hypocrisy at it's best.

This is the same guy who called suicide a “disease” caused by welfare handouts … while speaking to to high school students whose classmate had just killed himself.

Both Republicans and Democrats stick their feet in their mouths sometimes. But why do all the really mean-spirited gaffes always seem to come from Republicans?

Perhaps there's a particularly weak political gene-pool in Alaska. I certainly hope Mr Young does not profess to be a Christian:

Colossians 3:12-14
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Here’s the video with Don Young suggesting we feed homeless people to the wolves.