By Kristen Hackbarth and Bob Conrad
The pearl-clutching and Jesus praising at the Jan. 16 Washoe Board of County Commissioners meeting was next level, and we’re here for it.
At This Is Reno, we don’t consider ourselves to be clairvoyant. Still, when commissioners last year approved the addition of a once-monthly invocation to kick off their meetings, we didn’t question whether Reno Satanic would participate. We just wondered when.
Invocations at government meetings—local, statewide and national—have been a thing for a while. Not all local bodies have invocations—Sparks does; Reno does not.
The American Civil Liberties Association (ACLU) suggests that “religious freedom thrives best when the government stays out of it.” However, the group acknowledges that at least the Establishment Clause is a “guarantee that the government will neither prefer religion over non-religion nor favor particular faiths over others.”
Commissioner Clara Andriola pushed for invocations in 2023 shortly after being appointed to the board. “I want to extend my deepest appreciation for the staff of the County Manager’s Office,” she said of county staff’s quick turnaround on preparing an invocation policy. “It means a lot to represent our community in all faiths and being [sic] very inclusionary.”
Apparently being inclusive holds a narrow meaning for her. She walked out as Jason Miller of Reno Satanic spoke on Tuesday. 
The “unintended consequence,” as Commissioner Mike Clark called it, of Reno Satanic’s invocation at the county commission chambers wasn’t just that it was atheist; it was also that those who bring scripture and free speech arguments into commission chambers—along with name-calling, disrespectful jeering and a handful of four-letter words—were forced to see just how freedom of speech and religion manifest in real-time.
Bless their hearts.
The entire scene tied back to thoughts included in an essay on race published earlier this week by journalist Michele Norris in which she called out the “‘This is my country’ brand of patriotism.” She recalled a passage from Joan Didion’s “The White Album” many in the far right have adopted:
“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.”
The apoplectic hand-wringing by the Christofascist crowd—some of whom invoked the tired, predictable “free speech for me, but not for thee” motifs—was swiftly met with the obvious “be careful what you wish for” type commentary, which should have been foreseen and anticipated. The group has often been the loudest at commission meetings—library board and school district meetings, too—giving them the false impression that the meetings belong to them.
Reno Satanic is not a group that just came out of the woodwork. They organized to “push back against arbitrary authority” and “create a space for our members and allies to experience an authentic, reason-based, non-theistic religious community.”
They participate in local philanthropy, too.
Bob walked a homeless outreach event with them and others in 2019 as they distributed toiletry kits and cash to people living unsheltered. That was about the same time when some of those crying foul Tuesday were threatening to make citizen arrests of those living along the Truckee River. Watch the video interview here.
As some pointed out after the commission meeting, Reno Satanic may embody more Christian ideals than those engaging in Jesus-laced histrionics in protest of their presence.
Strange.
