Each year, a list of residents sign up to give an invocation to the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly meetings, a list that already is filled up for the 2022 calendar year. Policy states that the Assembly allows for an invocation, which could include a short prayer or a solemnizing message, to be offered at the beginning of the meetings for the benefit of the assembly to accommodate the spiritual needs of public officials.
Back in 2016, controversy erupted when two individuals gave separate invocations in Summer 2016, one from an atheist and one prepared by the Satanic Temple. As a result, the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly adopted restrictions, which were later declared unconstitutional, to limit the giving of invocations at Assembly meetings to members of religious associations that are established and regularly meet in the Kenai Peninsula Borough.
At the Tuesday January 18 Assembly meeting, Iris Fontana signed up to give a Satanic Temple invocation, which several members of the community objected to, including an assembly member, who called upon residents to, “silently stand strong in prayer”, citing scripture from Matthew 4:10.
Fontana said:
“Let us stand now. Unbowed and unfettered…
(At which point, Fontana was interrupted by several members of the general public who were in attendance. They interrupted by praying loudly with their backs faced to the invocation. Assembly President Brent Johnson asked for decorum from the public before allowing Fontana to continue…)
Let us stand now. Unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds in darken times. Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge and dispel our blissful and comforting delusions of old. Let us demand that individuals be judged for their actions, not their fealty to social norms and meaningless categories. Let us use reason in our solutions holding fast only to that which is demonstratably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all that which will not bend must break and that which can be destroyed by the truth should never be spared its demise. It is done. Hail Satan.”
The KPB Assembly Invocation Policy states that the invocation shall be voluntarily delivered by a resident of the Kenai Peninsula Borough. A person wishing to give an invocation must submit a dated written request to the clerk’s office.
Additionally, the Assembly requests by the language of its policy that no invocation should proselytize or advance any faith, or disparage the religious faith or non-religious views of others.