Scheduled Invocation Stirs Debate

Oskaloosa City Hall

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The item appears on the Oskaloosa City Council Agenda for Thursday, July 6th as simply, “Invocation: Justin Scott, Director, Eastern Iowa Atheists”.

Scott says that membership in Eastern Iowa Atheists is “about 500 members now” which covers eastern Iowa. The definition of an atheist is “a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.”

Scott says that he not only directs the group, but he does all of the PR, marketing, and social media for the group, and is not a resident of Mahaska County, but lives in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area.

Scott, who describes himself as an “atheist activist”, reached out to the city of Oskaloosa with his request in May of 2017 to deliver an invocation at the start of the city council meeting.

“We try to normalize atheism, because it’s still something that comes with a stigma”, says Scott. “We try to raise awareness; it’s ok to be an atheist.”

After reaching out to area media outlets, the conversation quickly became heated about that simple agenda item, and what implications it may have.

“I encourage folks to come out and take part in this because this is a very historic moment,” says Scott. Scott says that an atheist has never delivered an invocation at the Oskaloosa council meeting before. “This could be a very good learning opportunity for the entire city.”

Scott says they try to “keep an eye on” church state violations in government and public schools. “We also try to see where there are opportunities for atheists to take part in things where normally they are never invited or on the flip side, where religion sort of has a strangle hold on things.”

Looking to understand what city governments hold prayer before meetings, Scott built a spreadsheet that listed those communities, putting them in order of largest population to least population.

“When we make these requests, we don’t expect any pushback,” says Scott. “We expect pushback to come after it’s made public that city government has accepted our request.”

Scott referred to social media posts after media outlets release such stories. The comments section “lights up”.

The city of Oskaloosa didn’t offer any resistance to the request made by Scott. “They were very receptive to it.”

“With our invocation, it’s going to be a completely positive experience,” says Scott.

Scott has provided words at the start of several council meetings. In Waterloo he shared the following words, “Let this chamber ​deliberate with the understanding that not everyone in the room shares the same values, the same life experiences, or same religious beliefs. These differences can help to enrich these governmental tasks, but only when they aren’t used to limit or censor free speech, denigrate, or treat certain groups as second-­class citizens, or promote religious belief over non-­belief or one religious belief over all the others.”

The Establishment Clause states, “clause in the First Amendment of the US Constitution that prohibits the establishment of religion by Congress” is the gateway for different beliefs and religions to gain like access to governmental proceedings.

A U.S. Supreme Court case Town of Greece v. Galloway in 2014 said that Greece, New York may permit volunteer chaplains to open each legislative session with a prayer, but carries with it certain stipulations.

Scott pointed out comments originally made by city councilor, Aaron Ver Steeg, about the scheduled invocation. Scott says the comments made by Ver Steeg on his Facebook page have invoked emotions on both sides of the issue.

Scott and the Easter Iowa Atheists send out press releases to local media outlets notifying them about the upcoming event at the local government meetings. Many of those comments and emotions were stirred after the media began reporting about the upcoming invocation to be presented.

Reaching out to the media “Is simply part of our marketing plan whenever we go into something like this,” says Scott.

“When a city decides to approve us, I [Scott] don’t say anything until either we’ve reached out to media in that area about it, and they reported on it,” says Scott.

“This story is worth covering,” says Scott. “The story in the last day has exploded.”

Scott said that the comments by Ver Steeg are the reason this story gained attention and were a “terrible public example of religious privilege and Christian arrogance in this country, when an elected official can be so intolerant to somebody that has a different worldview than themselves.”

Scott says that he believes in “an open forum or nothing” when it comes to government representation. “This kind of plays into exactly why we are choosing to do this, choosing to reach out, it’s about as much as trying to normalize atheism and trying to get us included in all of this. It’s also about challenging the status quo of Christian privilege, an idea that only Christianity has a voice.”

Scott reached out to an atheist blog to talk about Ver Steeg’s comments, “that has about 500,000 followers on its Facebook page alone.” There were approximately 50 comments, to a brief article about Ver Steeg, written by the blog’s readers.

“We want folks to know, in the next generation, religion’s on its way out, whether they like it or not,” says Scott, who highlighted numbers available on the City Data website that claim in 2010, 20.1% of the residents in the county were mainline Protestant. Those who claim to be Evangelical Protestant is 18.0%, while the report states that 55.6% says they have no religion.

Scott says his interest in addressing government bodies stemmed from the 2016 Iowa Caucus, “where I made a name for myself as an atheist activist, because I went out and I approached every presidential candidate running for office.”

Scott says he hopes that one day “I really want to get to the point that when an atheist does something, or takes part in a governmental exercise, I want it to be non-news worthy.”

Scott says he reached out to the Oskaloosa media because his invocation at the Oskaloosa City Council is “historic, because it’s the first time.”

The word about Scott’s upcoming invocation at the Oskaloosa City Council meeting caused some area residents to call for the city manager’s resignation.

Ver Steeg added a recent comment to his Facebook page stating, “Before you ask that the City Manager be fired for allowing an atheist to give the invocation at our next council meeting, keep in mind that the man approached him and he had to make a decision. In this day and age, with all the controversies he made the right decision.”

Scott will deliver the invocation for the Oskaloosa City Council meeting on Thursday, July 6, 2017.