The Kirksville City Council in Missouri is considering bringing invocations back to their meetings a year after an atheist convinced them to switch it to a moment of silence. It’s happening because a new council member with Christian nationalist tendencies thinks his religion needs to be injected into the start of meetings.

The saga began last summer when an atheist named Ethan Gabel, who lives in Kirksville, sent an email to the council informing them of research he had done. Of the 331 invocations given in front of the council since 2005, 226 of them were Christian prayers often delivered by local Christian leaders. The other 105 (many of which occurred during the pandemic) were delivered by the mayor, council members, or the city clerk, all of which were concerning for different reasons since they lent government authority to those prayers.