Local Pastafarians question the use of prayer in Rancho Cordova City Council meetings

Sacramento is home to at least 52 Pastafarians—aka followers of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And they’re boiled over. 

Of course, 52 is only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of international followers of the parody religion (counting Facebook “likes,” anyway), which was created in 2005 by Bobby Henderson to protest a Kansas School Board decision to teach intelligent design instead of evolution in some public school science classes. Since then, the religion has been an outlet for atheists to feel like a part of something bigger and The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has even spread internationally (read here about the 2011 Austrian colander incident).

Anyway, members of the Sacramento Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster are a bit steamed up with the Rancho Cordova City Council for allowing “explicit invocation of a particular religious belief.”

Here are the guidelines for the invocation:

(Photo courtesy the Sacramento Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster Facebook page.)

And here’s a well-edited montage of all the people who have broken these invocation guidelines in the last year or so:

(Video courtesy the Sacramento Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster Facebook page.)

Special shout out to the guy who keeps talking about partying, and proclaims at the 1:17 mark: “Finally father, we want to invite you to our party, because in Rancho Cordova we’re gonna have a good time.”

Now, a member of the Pastafarian group has offered to open the October 7 Rancho Cordova City Council meeting with a (probably sardonic) prayer. The group is also encouraging the public to fill out a public comment slip at the meeting and speak about prayer in government meetings. 

Says the event page for the public prayer: “May the City of Rancho Cordova be touched by His noodly appendage!”

RAmen.

P.S. Speaking of things you barely knew existed, did you know that Rancho Cordova is sometimes referred to by locals using the nickname “Rancho Cambodia?” Seriously: Google it. It’s even on Urban Dictionary. (Side note: I’ve been to both, and Cambodia is way more fun than Rancho, but Rancho apparently has a way better participatory democracy.)

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