It is eerily appropriate that this column is being published on the National Day of Prayer, because prayer is at the center of it. As always when a journalist deals with the subject, I’m going try to do so in a fair and balanced way. Forgive me if I fail at any point.
At a late-April Cambridge City Council session, resident Victoria Dowling delivered the invocation at the start. But it was an unusual one, as it was based on the Seven Tenets of the Satanic Temple. Secular and humanist in nature, it called on the commissioners and mayor to govern with empathy, reason, and fairness, especially toward minority voices. Dowling, who said she wasn’t a Satanist, hoped with her invocation to stand up for others.
But who were these “others,” and why would Dowling feel the need to stand up for them? To answer that, we need to go back to November 2025, when the City Council voted to adopt Resolution 25-13, which stated that all of its meetings would begin with a religious invocation. Council President Sputty Cephas stated at the time that this was keeping in line with the Maryland state legislature and Dorchester County Council, who start their sessions with verbalized prayer.
Local minister Stephen Hackett said in a petition supporting the resolution that he believed “the invocation is not only lawful but a vital part of our civic culture.” Others agree with him that it is legal. As an anonymous commenter on Reddit put it, “As long as the prayer doesn’t discriminate against any faiths and no one is forced to pray then it is constitutional. A city council opening a meeting with a voluntary, non-coercive prayer is allowed.”
The Cambridge City Council wanting to inject a religious invocation into a government function should not be a surprise to anyone. Thomas Skeeter explained on Facebook that our city “is largely characterized by a diverse Christian population, reflecting the broader religious landscape of Dorchester County. The area has a strong presence of both historically Black Protestant churches and various Protestant denominations, alongside Catholic congregations.”
In fact, Cambridge has around 65-80 houses of worship and religion-related organizations. For a city of about 13,000 people, that’s a very high density, roughly one religious institution for every 160-200 residents. It’s probably an even greater Christian population than in the U.S. as a whole, where 68 percent identify with that faith.
However, 22 percent of Americans have no religion at all. And each younger generation is less Christian and more likely to be non-religious. Around 40 percent of Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) are unaffiliated. Even among younger people who identify as Christian, there is lower church attendance and lower emphasis on religion in daily life. The U.S. is moving from a Christian-majority culture to a more religiously mixed and secular one.
As such, some residents have expressed to the City Council that they are uncomfortable with the public prayer, which makes them feel unwelcome at the meetings. Their opinions may also be influenced by the way the debate over the council invocation unfolded here, shaped in part by the tone of exchanges among city leaders. Most obvious in the initial deliberations were comments made by Mayor Lajan Cephas-Bey.
The mayor said in November that the goal of the invocation was to create an inclusive space where attendees felt no pressure to participate. But her words and behavior when arguing with the city commissioners belied that attitude. When Commissioner Frank Stout proposed an amendment to the resolution that would place the prayer before the start of each council session, something he decided on after hearing from some of his constituents, Cephas-Bey said she was adamant that the invocation would be part of the regular meeting.
“I am truly fed up with this community,” she said. “Whenever there’s something that can . . . put us together, we have the silent warriors who . . . have the commission speak for them. . . . If they can’t speak for themselves, as far as I’m concerned, it’s irrelevant.”
After that session, the Reddit user MangoSalsaDuck said that “the mayor is not only in the wrong for this, her bullying behavior was abhorrent. . . . How she’s clung to power this long is beyond me. . . . I certainly don’t appreciate the very unchristian-like way she bullied her way into getting what she wants. This is not about religious conviction for her, it’s about political pandering.”
While some other Redditors echoed that user’s sentiments, supporters of the resolution defended the mayor’s remarks as reflecting strong personal conviction and frustration with a lack of direct public engagement by critics of the measure. However, in response to Cephas-Bey’s frustration, resident Race Dowling said in a late-November council meeting that some residents could not attend meetings due to other obligations, and that the silence of many nonreligious folks did not mean they lacked interest in the issue.
I will commend the City Council for not preventing Victoria Dowling from delivering her Satanic invocation or even publicly objecting. It should be noted, though, that Mayor Cephas-Bey and Sputty Cephas did remain seated, which they don’t do for Christian prayers.
Anyway, I want to conclude this column with something that seems to fit with the subject: a couple of Bible passages.
First Timothy 2:1-2 exhorts readers to “pray for leaders and all people.” This is often interpreted as encouraging prayer in public or civic contexts, including for government officials. Meanwhile, The Gospel of Matthew 6:5-6 calls on believers to “go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” This passage doesn’t forbid public prayer, but rather it criticizes prayer done for show, to gain attention or status.
So, the New Testament does not present a simple “yes or no” on public prayer. Instead, it holds two ideas at once: prayer should be sincere, humble, and not for show, but it can also be shared, communal, and part of public life. That tension is exactly why the issue still sparks debate today, especially when it moves from churches into civic spaces.