{"id":23329,"date":"2016-08-16T08:00:34","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T15:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/alaska-editorial-devils-in-the-minutes\/"},"modified":"2016-08-16T08:00:34","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T15:00:34","slug":"alaska-editorial-devils-in-the-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/opinion\/alaska-editorial-devils-in-the-minutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska Editorial: Devil’s in the minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following editorial first appeared in the Ketchikan Daily News:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Devil was given his due Tuesday night when a member of the Satanic Temple gave the invocation for the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old,\u201d said Iris Fontana, according to press reports.<\/p>\n

The invocation \u2014 which was offered while most Assembly members stood respectfully \u2014 concluded with the phrase \u201cHail Satan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hail Satan.<\/p>\n

Not a typical phrase to be offered as a guiding light for a municipal meeting. And as we\u2019re not well-versed in the finer points of theistic Satanism, we referenced a few dictionaries to find a basic definition of whom or what Satan is.<\/p>\n

Webster\u2019s New World College Dictionary defines Satan as \u201cthe great enemy of humankind and of goodness; the Devil: usually identified with Lucifer, the chief of the fallen angels,\u201d and as, \u201cany of various celestial beings functioning as accuser or critic of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The American Heritage Dictionary defines Satan as \u201ca powerful spiritual being\u201d in Abrahamic religions, \u201cthe tempter and persecutor of humanity, sometimes considered as an angel who rebelled against God and became the Devil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or, this from Wiktionary: \u201cThe supreme evil spirit in the Abrahamic religions, who tempts humanity and rules Hell; the Devil.\u201d<\/p>\n

For some folks who view municipal government \u2014 or any government \u2014 as a special circle of Hell, invoking Satan at the start of a meeting might make sense.<\/p>\n

The rest of us are just thinking, \u201cWhat the hell?\u201d<\/p>\n

When our government officials are comfortable with standing at respectful attention while their meeting opens with a call for obeisance to \u201cthe great enemy of humankind and goodness,\u201d something, somewhere, has gone very, very wrong.<\/p>\n

It suggests that we no longer seek to avoid evil; we now actively embrace evil.<\/p>\n

Hail Satan. Hail Temptor and Persecutor of Humanity. Hail Supreme Evil Spirit.<\/p>\n

Is this what has become acceptable \u201cwisdom\u201d in the halls of government?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following editorial first appeared in the Ketchikan Daily News<\/a>: The Devil was given his due Tuesday night when a member of the Satanic Temple gave the invocation for the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly meeting. \u201cLet us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23329"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}