PRAYERS AND SWEARS

The recent CAUSE CÉLÈBRE involving our Mayor and Councilwoman Williams focused interest on the Flag salute and the invocation prayer at Council meetings

Although I consider for reasons previously enumerated both to be superfluous elements for a Council meeting or indeed for any routine civic affair; I can accept their presence since it seems to give some comfort.

That said; I have written about the Flag Pledge in previous blogs and stated that I would discuss in the same manner the prayer.

Americans United believes there should be no official prayers before government meetings. Individual lawmakers are free to pray on their own, but they should not presume to pray on behalf of their diverse constituents

After extensive Internet surfing it became obvious that “apparently, none of the many religious cases decided before the 21^st century by the U.S. Supreme Court involved prayer at a meeting of a municipal council.”

In fact almost all the landmark decisions of the 19^th century such as Abbigton School District v. Schempp (1963) or Lee v. Weisman (1992) were related to prayer in a school setting; either in the classroom or in the latter case at a graduation ceremony

In Abbington; the Supreme Court found that this practice also violated the establishment clause by putting the government in the posture of leading a religious exercise. Since the schools were having students read from the New Testament, the policy automatically excluded and offended Jewish students, as well as atheists and students from other faiths.

Lee v. Weisman was even more interesting because the very non sectarian prayer was given by Rabbi and the suing party was Jewish.

The rabbi's simple prayer had thanked God for the liberty that America enjoyed and asked for God's blessing on the teachers, students, and administrators of the school. The Weismans claimed that the school had essentially turned itself into a house of worship, and their position was supported by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The federal district court in Providence and the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston found the prayers unconstitutional. They did so based on the Supreme Court's ruling in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), in which the justices established a three‐part test deciding whether a government‐sponsored religious event violated the Establishment Clause** of the Constitution.

To summarize; “Current precedents and court decisions appear to have reached a compromise in the matter of invocations before government bodies. The consensus is that such invocations do not constitute private speech, which is fully protected. They seem to agree that it is acceptable to mention "God" in generic prayers recited during invocations. But it is not permissible to mention a specific God or religion by name. So one can appeal for the protection of "God" in the generic sense. But one is not permitted to mention the name of Jehovah, Jesus, Krishna, Diana, or any of the thousands of other Gods, Goddesses and God-men who have been worshiped by followers of different religions. This would seem to violate the third principle listed above: the promotion of religion above secularism. But it appears that the courts and legislative bodies do not consider this to have a significantly serious impact to warrant being declared unconstitutional. Perhaps in the future, when the percentage of American adults who do not believe in the existence of a supreme deity increases, this point will become more critical.

The First Amendment "giveth," because it guarantees almost uninhibited personal religious freedom. But the First Amendment also "taketh away:" It requires governments, including municipalities and Boards of Education, to remain religiously neutral; they may not promote either a religious or a secular way of life.

One point of confusion has arisen over Islam. As noted above, a reference to "God" is OK but to Jesus Christ or Jesus or Christ is not because the latter three identify a specific deity by name or title."Allah" is simply the word in Arabic that is equivalent to "God" in English. "Allah" is neither a name or title. Christians whose native language is Arabic use "Allah" where an English person would say "God." Thus a government agency including a military chaplain can refer to "Allah" in a prayer but not to "Jesus."

Although not a prayer the swearing of an oath created a similar problem there is a landmark decision as a result of a suit by ACLU in North Carolina filed in Wake County on behalf of the organization’s statewide membership of approximately 8,000 individuals of many different faiths, including Islam and Judaism

In May 2007, Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway ruled that people of non-Christian faiths must be allowed to use their own religious texts when being sworn in as jurors or witnesses.

Should there be a moral to this series of blogs it would be "don't disrespect anyone who for personal reasons chooses not to participate in the Flag or Prayer ceremonies; that would be unconstitutional."

**The Establishment Clause is the first of several pronouncements in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, stating,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

Together with the Free Exercise Clause ("... or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"), these two clauses make up what are called the "religion clauses" of the First Amendment.

The establishment clause has generally been interpreted to prohibit 1) the establishment of a national religion by Congress, or 2) the preference by the U.S. government of one religion over another. The first approach is called the "separation" or "no aid" interpretation, while the second approach is called the "non-preferential" or "accommodation" interpretation. The accommodation interpretation prohibits Congress from preferring one religion over another, but does not prohibit the government's entry into religious domain to make accommodations in order to achieve the purposes of the Free Exercise Clause.