Local Wiccan Uninvited To Give City Council Invocation Due To Community Fears

I doubt it's the first or last time something like this has or will happen. This is why I'm such a strong advocate for keeping religion far away from politics, someone will always be denied for one reason or another.

WHNT News

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) – City Council chambers were filled with people Thursday evening for the regularly scheduled meeting of the Huntsville City Council.

But missing from the crowd was Blake Kirk, who – up until Wednesday – had been asked to give the invocation.

WHNT News 19 confirmed with Huntsville City Attorney Peter Joffrion that Blake had been asked to give the invocation Thursday, but when the agenda was released publicly earlier this week, several council members received community concerns about ‘a Wiccan’ being invited to speak.

Blake is a practicing member and clergy in the Wiccan faith, and surprisingly the man at the center of this controversy has given an invocation in front of city council in Huntsville before.

“I gave the invocation earlier this year, at the time they did not ask me what my faith affiliation was, but when they did this time and I told them ‘Wiccan,’ I was told I was no longer invited to give it,” Blake told WHNT News 19 from his home Thursday night.

All or none. None would be the smarter way to go. I think it's best to keep religion personal and private.

That's a little discriminatory..... What exactly are these grown ass adults afraid of? Do they go home and tell their kids to watch out for the boogie man under the bed, and actually mean it too....s m h

Won't somebody please think of the children.

Stupid people with stupid concerns, so what's new in this world?

I believe the opposite.

I believe that everyone has the right to his/her own faith or religion with no fear of prosecution or any kind of ill consequence because of it. Actually I think that's "world wide" illegal since you cant stop someone from being politically active or from speaking publicly on behalf of a political party because you're from a certain religion.

Thats actually part of the universal declaration of human rights and its written as a declaration by the UN... so thats pretty much illegal - WORLD WIDE.

a reply to: FraternitasSaturni

I believe the opposite.

I'll echo that.

You can tell an awful lot about people when you let them speak their minds. Hiding religious beliefs sorta puts one on the wrong path of political correctness. Who would vote for someone who would willingly suppress the expression of his own beliefs? Before you know it, that person will expect the same from his constituents. Very slippery slope there.

a reply to: FraternitasSaturni

I believe that too but i think religion has no place in government.

For most of the 1990s I lived in Madison Alabama, which was just West of Huntsville. It's heavy duty fundamentalist Christian down there. I'm not surprised about the prejudice against Wiccans. The majority of people down there hated anyone who worshipped differently than they did. That includes a heck of a lot of christian on christian hate. That being said ... keep all religions out of government functions or let them all in. Pick one or the other.

I'd like to hear what a Wiccan invocation is. The city council should have let him do it even after finding out he was of a non-traditional religion. After all, the council exists, among other things, on the foundation of freedom of religion. Something we seem to forget more and more as time goes by.

I see a lawsuit in that Cities future.

a reply to: Kali74

Head-shakingly stupid. Seriously. It's the south so I'll give them a little leeway since they are, well, Southern... but it's also 2014. Stupid.

But, that aside, this might actually be the best thing to happen to the priest. I'm hoping there will be a spark from this to open some more dialog. It's long been a persecuted religion that seems to be socially acceptable to dismiss and exclude. If this guy was a Jew or a Muslim, there would already be huge protests.

I like very close to Huntsville. Go there a lot. There's a good size "alternative" crowd there involved in almost everything you could imagine. Almost nothing off the table. So to see this is a reminder of how ignorance and fear still runs rampant. Real Wiccans work with the energies of the Earth and believe in the powers of Karma. So to be a witch and throw a few nasty spells around is not what they are about. I make it a rule not to judge any religion or lifestyle until you talk face to face with someone living it. I have spoken to Wiccans. What you see on TV and what they really are, are two different things. There is a lot of misrepresentation and misinformation out there. Huntsville City Council just lost a huge chance to become informed. How sad!