Just over a year ago, I was celebrating a major court victory that put a stop to virtually non-stop Christian prayers at the city council meetings in Greece, New York. Now, that decision is back up in the air.

Here’s the story (pretty much as I wrote it then): The town of Greece, New York had opened board meetings with prayers since 1999 thanks to Town Supervisor John Auberger. While the invocations could be delivered by representatives of many different faiths, virtually all of the representatives were Christian. They still are (PDF):

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Back in February, Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia celebrated the opening of its 80th season with the unveiling of a mural painted by artist D.R. Mullins. The mural “was designed to reflect the theater’s global reach and its past” and included an image of the Hindu god Shiva:

“The Eastern influence, I wanted to show everybody who comes to Barter we’re not necessarily a regional theater, we’re world famous,” [Mullins] said. “I think it speaks of Barter’s continuing trend to go multicultural.”

Well, that’s one way to do it. In any case, no one in their right mind would see this as some endorsement of Hinduism. The artist didn’t say that and no one would take him seriously even if he did.

But community members aren’t happy about it. They took their complaints to the Washington County Board of Supervisors and the city officials decided to take action by… unanimously voting to put up the Ten Commandments on government property:

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