Some who tuned into Tuesday’s Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly meeting may have been a bit confused when they heard an invocation that was different than what they expected. A pastor in Homer delivered the invocation at the start of the meeting, invoking the blessings of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Pastor Barrett Fletcher, delivered the invocation via the Zoom online platform: “We’re here again, a year later, and several assembly members still feel the need for divine intervention in their work. Whether that work is the mundane properties and tax issues, or important education or environmental issues, or perhaps revolutionary voting rights issues. I admit to feeling a little trepidation, asking the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster to intervene yet again, so soon after the last time. I mean, was it because of – or in spite of – his chronic inebriation, he did create us with the ability to reason for ourselves? One fear is that he’ll be quite reasonably annoyed at our constant pleas for help, with work that he created us to be quite capable of accomplishing on our own.”
Fletcher started the local congregation of Pastafarians on the lower peninsula. The church was formed in 2005 as a response to the Kansas State Board of Education’s hearings on evolution in schools. Its founder sent a letter about the church as a way to argue against teaching creationism in biology classes.
“With the understanding that the Monster is generally believed to be a happy drunk, and not easily riled, I again ask the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, inebriated creator of the universe and all that’s in it, to rouse himself from his stupor and let his noodly appendages ground each assembly member in their seats… Ramen.”
Fletcher created the local congregation, in Homer, to make a point and effect change when it comes to the borough’s invocation policy. The American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska sued the borough in 2016 on behalf of residents who were denied the right to deliver invocations under the borough’s previous policy.
