Public Prayers at Government Meetings Are Inappropriate

While attending a local government meeting last month, I stood by as a preacher was summoned to the podium to deliver a public prayer. After asking everyone to bow their heads, the celebrant solicited divine support for the elected leaders on the dais. Then, despite our Constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state, there followed another religious ceremony: the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, requiring a pious hand-over-heart response and recitation of the words “one nation, under God.”

When it came my turn to speak, this nonbeliever offered the services of a freethinker to provide a nontheistic introduction at a future meeting. A secular introduction, I thought, would help to balance the overt religiosity of the pledge.

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Coincidentally, last month also brought a Supreme Court decision that could end invocations at public meetings.

On June 19, the court issued its decision in response to a suit filed by two students, a Mormon and a Catholic, against the public prayer policy of the Santa Fe, Texas, school district. The district’s policy permitted the student body to annually vote on whether an invocation should be spoken over the public-address system at varsity football games and the selection of one student to deliver the invocations.

On a 6-3 vote, the high court found the school district’s policy violated the “establishment clause” of the 1st Amendment by providing a government forum for delivery of a religious message. The court also noted that the opportunity to give the invocation was granted to only one student per year and that the district’s policy of having students vote on invocations resulted in a majority decision ensuring that the opinions of the minority would never be heard.

As an example of the religious messages that led to litigation against the Santa Fe Independent School District, the following is an excerpt from a 1994 Santa Fe High School graduation ceremony student invocation: “Please bow your heads. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for allowing us to gather here safely tonight. We thank you for the wonderful year you have allowed us to spend together as students of Santa Fe. We thank you for our teachers . . . thank you, Lord, for our parents and may each one receive the special blessing . . . in Jesus’ name we pray.”

The students who opposed this invocation were permitted by the district court to litigate anonymously to protect them from intimidation and harassment. Isn’t it ironic that after 2,000 years of Christianity, those who opposed prayer at high school football games felt the need to remain anonymous to protect themselves from prayer supporters?

If this Supreme Court decision doesn’t end the practice of religious invocations at government meetings, I offer the following secular alternative: “As we convene this meeting, I invite all to consider how fortunate we are to live in this community, free to pursue our livelihoods, raise our families and select our belief systems in a progressive and democratic society. Please consider how you may most productively assist your elected officials to govern in a fair and informed manner. Please exercise your responsibilities, even as you enjoy the rights of your citizenship, by offering information, opinions and recommendations in a constructive manner, and by being tolerant of viewpoints with which you disagree.”

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Religions parse humanity into diverse groups of believers. By its very nature, religious dogma discriminates between believers (“those who believe as we believe”) and nonbelievers (“those who don’t believe as we believe.”) Because persons attending a government meeting are already divided by various political philosophies and points of view, adding a religious ritual, far from encouraging unity, probably serves to further fracture consensus along denominational fault lines.

The 1st Amendment protects those with minority religious beliefs (or no religious beliefs) against the tyranny of those with majority beliefs. Now, invocations at high school football games have been found to be unconstitutional.

If you agree that invocations at government-sponsored meetings, sporting events, air shows and other venues are offensive or inappropriate, please ask your elected and community leaders to remove prayer from the government’s agenda.