The US Supreme Court today ruled that the US Constitution allows town councils to begin sessions with a prayer, even if that prayer, in practice, tends to favor one religion over all others, the Associated Press reports.
Justice Anthony M Kennedy, writing for the Court’s majority, said the town of Greece, N.Y., which is near Rochester, hadn’t violated the Constitution’s First Amendment by opening public meetings with a prayer given by a “chaplain of the month.” The town claimed they opened up the prayer to speakers from all faiths, but in practice, the chaplain was almost always Christian and used language in the prayers that was distinctly sectarian. Justice Kennedy also acknowledged that the prayers were ceremonial in nature and served to “lend gravity to the occasion and reflect values long part of the nation’s heritage.”
That is, we’ve done this sort of thing since the first Congress, so why should it be declared unconstitutional for town councils? Not only is the business conducted by town councils fundamentally different from that conducted by Congress, but the Supreme Court hasn’t been charged with upholding historical traditions; rather, it’s their role to uphold the Constitution.
Not only is this decision bad for government, but it is also bad for Christianity. Jesus himself made it clear that praying should be a private thing, not a public display, no matter who’s in the audience, when he said, “When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”
I strongly advise that any governmental body, including the county commissioners in Carroll County, Md., that begins government business sessions with a prayer, foster a spirit of inclusion, perhaps by spreading out the faith being promoted in the prayers. An example might be to have a Catholic priest pray in January, a Protestant minister in February, a Jewish rabbi in March, a Muslim imam in April, Hinduism in April, Mormonism in May, Buddhism in June, Wican in August, and by that time, it should be clear that no spirit of inclusion is being sought.
If it goes longer than that, it will be a happy situation indeed and a great time for religious faith in the US. If the point, as I suspect, is to exclude people who don’t share the beliefs of the council members, it may be constitutional, now that the Supreme Court has made it the supreme law of the land, but it is a good thing neither for democracy nor for people of deep faith.
A Maryland judge who ruled against a ban on gay marriage in 2006 has retired from the bench, the Baltimore Sun reports today. “When tradition is the guise under which prejudice or animosity hides, it is not a legitimate state interest,” wrote M Brooke Murdock, Baltimore Circuit judge, who immediately stayed her own ruling, anticipating an appeal. The Maryland Court of Appeals did reverse her decision back then, but the rest, as Dan Rodricks writes, is history.