There is a raging controversy right now here in our county. For probably ever, the county commissioner board has opened its meetings with a short prayer. I'd bet that (not that) long ago, one of the commissioners led the prayer, but now the board invites local ministers to give the invocation. The controversy ignited when the ACLU threatened a lawsuit unless the board ceased the current practice, claiming that the Supreme Court has ruled it un-constitutional to have "sectarian prayer" in government meetings. Their view is based on a flawed understanding of what "establishment of religion" means.
So far, the board has stood its ground, enlisting the legal support of a group similar to the ACLU, though with pretty-much opposite views on the constitutional interpretations of the religious freedom clause. The local paper's letters to the editor have seen the usual collection of cranks on all sides weigh in. Here's my take...
For anyone to suggest that there is a definitive answer on something like this really hasn't been paying attention to the mess that SCOTUS has made of the 1st amendment. Going at least as far back as the nutty Lemon tests, the court has swayed in the wind on religious freedom, such that no one can really say with ACLU-like confidence that precedent is so obvious. It is most dismaying, then, to see the county attorneys cave and say they won't defend the county if it goes to trial (wouldn't that be a fireable offense where you work?). In this situation, at worst, it's an open question, particularly with a fresh court.
But let's consider a common sense understanding of religious freedom in the context of publicly offered prayers. The solution proffered by the agitators is the least likely to be the constitutional one. They demand that prayers not invoke the name of a deity. That strikes a reasonable man as a case of the government dictating the content of a prayer. Surely that is the most objectionable possible outcome for a free people. I'd rather see no prayer at all than a dictated-content prayer. A moment of silence perhaps. The last thing we need is the government telling us how & when & where we can pray.
Besides the coercion angle, there really is no such thing as a "non-sectarian" prayer anyway. There might be a mealy prayer, a meaningless set of nice & inoffensive phrases, offered to this newly created "government god", the Anonymous God of the Greeks that Paul countered in Acts 17. Here in America, some 2 millennia later, that god is making a comeback, apparently.
