How a persistent atheist persuaded an Iowa city council to drop public prayer

I assume most of you are unfamiliar with the results of last year’s mayoral election in Waverly, excluding, of course, the 10,000 souls who live in this northeast Iowa town that is home to Wartburg College.

That election brought together a pair of strangers, Dean Soash and Justin Scott, who had a sensible conversation about public prayer where there might have been a bitter dispute.

Bitter disputes tend to attract a media scrum. Sensible conversations sometimes attract only me as a journalist.

I may be doing this wrong.

Soash, 80, is Waverly’s new mayor. But the semi-retired electrician, who has long scrutinized civic affairs and served on the local planning and zoning commission, didn’t throw his hat into the ring until two days after the filing deadline.

Though it was his first appearance on a public ballot and he had to rely on a write-in campaign, Soash came within 16 votes of the incumbent mayor, 994 to 1,010.

That triggered a run-off election that Soash handily won, 1,446 to 888.

Scott wasn't on the ballot. A professional photographer, he doesn’t even live in Waverly but in the nearby tiny town of Denver, Iowa, with his wife and three young children.

In recent years he also has become a passionate grassroots activist, particularly as founding director of Eastern Iowa Atheists.

Scott previously lived in Waterloo, where for the past couple of years he had lobbied Mayor Quentin Hart to either diversify or end his city's practice of prayer at City Council meetings.

Hart welcomed Scott to deliver an atheist invocation, and ever since the two have maintained a cordial debate.

Scott also strayed to Oskaloosa to deliver an invocation, where he encouraged those in the room to harness “the power to empathize with those that are different from you, that have taken a different path than you, that experienced and continue to experience different struggles than yours.”

Last year, Scott even delivered the first atheist invocation inside the Iowa House.

That was in April, the same month he first approached Waverly's council. Thus began months of public sparring that got entangled with the mayoral election.

So long before Soash took office he was aware of Scott. A Baptist by birth turned Methodist by marriage, Soash also felt that council prayer “needed to be resolved, one way or the other."

Shortly after winning his runoff election, he phoned Scott and invited him to deliver an invocation at his very first council meeting.

Pleasantly surprised, Scott nevertheless declined the offer. He had come to believe that council prayer of any kind had become too divisive in Waverly.

So the two kept talking. Scott prodded Soash to end formal prayer at meetings.

The mayor surprised Scott again recently when he went on local radio to announce his decision to end council prayer, starting with that night's meeting.

“I can practice my faith anywhere,” Soash told me. “If I’m in the woods, I can pray there.”

Or he can pray silently at the council meeting without making it a centerpiece of city business. “I hope it becomes a moot issue,” he said.

Scott, heartened by Waverly's mayor, is forging ahead with his statewide cause.

He's building a database of Iowa cities to track whether they include a formal prayer or invocation at council meetings. He’s closing in on 400 cities surveyed and said only about 2 percent of them include a prayer.

He has been surprised to find that the praying towns aren’t necessarily tiny rural bastions of faith. Our two largest cities, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, start with invocations.

Monday, the same day Soash discontinued prayer in Waverly, Councilwoman Linda Westergaard — according to my reporter colleague MacKenzie Elmer — asked everybody to stand and pray at the start of the council meeting in Des Moines.

For Scott, this is an issue of basic fairness. The U.S. Supreme Court several years ago upheld the right of legislative bodies to include prayer.

But Scott points to America's growing secular or vaguely spiritual population that deserves equal and fair representation from elected officials.

It's personal for Scott, part of his family legacy. He thinks back to his maternal great-grandfather Leo Croce, a battle-scarred World War II veteran who returned to Iowa to spar with city councils on behalf of more and better housing for the poor and elderly.

Right now, Scott is soliciting state lawmakers again for an invitation to return to the Iowa Capitol and deliver a secular invocation inside the Iowa Senate.

Soash, meanwhile, has a long to-do list this year for his city, including a new river bridge, street repairs and an aging wastewater treatment plant.

He looks at his mayoral duties as just “another chapter in my life, and another challenge.”

For decades, he said, he made a living from his neighbors with a business that he handed down to his son.

“Why not give back to the people that have made your life worth living?” Soash said.

If you’re looking for a positive example of a public servant, there would be worse options than this 80-year-old first-time mayor.

I also pray for the success of Scott's crusade.

Personally, I happen to believe in God because of a faith I can't fully articulate as an intellectual argument. That's the nature of faith for you.

No doubt it's informed by all my years of asking questions as a journalist. I look forward to hearing in person the ultimate coherent explanation for this mess.

I'll try to take detailed notes for you.

If Christians or any other religion looks to government to further God's work, I'm afraid that faith is sorely misplaced.

One is meant to fill potholes, the other to save souls. Please don't confuse them.

Kyle Munson can be reached at 515-284-8124 or kmunson@dmreg.com. See more of his columns and video at DesMoinesRegister.com/KyleMunson. Connect with him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (@KyleMunson).

Clarification: The U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld the right of legislative bodies to include ceremonial prayer did not grant approval to elected officials to lead prayers themselves and ask their constituents to participate.