Public prayer in Jesus name declared legal

Right. This IS a new ruling, I just discovered, so I revised the post accordingly.

This shouldn’t be news. The sad thing to me is that it is. The 1st Amendment only addresses the prohibition against the State establishing religion. Of course, a public official praying in Jesus’ name is not akin to establishing a state religion. The Free Exercise clause of the 1st Amendment, guaranteeing all of us the right to freely practice our faith, actually protects this official’s right to pray in Jesus’ name.

Of course, the same clause would also protect the right of a government official who happened to be Muslim, for example, to pray in the name of Allah, as long as he was not trying to establish Islam as a state religion. We, as Christians, need to understand our Constitutional protections, and be consistent in enforcing them, for our own long term protection. If such an event bothers you sufficiently, your remedy is not the courts, but the ballot box. Would that we all would stop running to the courts, and express our views and concerns through the ballot box, as our founders intended.

It would probably bother me alot to have public officials pray to the sea goddess, or refer to diety as a she. It would REALLY bother me to have to allow prayers at a government funded institution that would pray, for example to satan.

What is the point? I as a lutheran would not accept the prayer of a non-christian or even some christians on my behalf. I can pray at home or at my church.

Further, If someone DID ask ME to pray at a public function, I am not sure I would accept in that I would have to pray in Jesus name, and so would abridge the rights of the jews or hindus or whathaveyou in the crowd who would not willingly accept having me lead them in that prayer. It would seem that a pluralistic society would demand that kind of respect and consideration modeled by a christian because I would certainly want to be extended the same, EXPECIALLY if that public place was a classroom and the teacher was muslim or wikkan and my child was being led in prayer.

Finally it would seem, with this ruling, that the only thing that would prevent a prayer by say, a wiccan, would be the official who vets the person asked to pray. This looks alot like the rule of men, every one doing what he feels is right, rather than any rule of law.

With all these considerations, I really do not think I would at all object to simply banning public prayer in these kinds of venues.

While it is certainly true that there is a long tradition of evoking diety (eg the founders praying to their masonic “great architect of the universe” small-d diety), the situation then was that our country was diverse religiously almost exclusively as diferent christian sects with a few jews.

Would it not be wise for us christians to anticipate a time when other faiths outnumber christians or even worse (and more likely) the day when there is some sort of pseudo-christian state religious cult similar to what the romans had but with a thin christian veneer?

There is an excellent very short book by concordia title “How to respond to the Lodges”. In that book is an excellent treatment of exactly how Lutherans view the nature of prayer and what exactly prayer is.

In this area, the Wisconsin Synod Lutherans have some good insights for the rest of us. While some in that synod, I think, push things to the wrong conclusion based on some partially uncertain premises, they have sent out their own military chaplains at their own expense rather than participate in the military chaplaincy program of the US government. This is consistent, laudatory and very, very wise on their part. That commitment to principle on their part neatly avoids alot of these issues.

Bill @ 5: But, my point is, the issue in question is NOT a constitutional issue. There is nothing in the Constitution that legitimately prohibits a public official from praying in the tradition of his religious faith. He/she has a free exercise right under the 1st Amendment to do so. If folks don’t want public officials praying in the name of Jesus, or Satan, or Allah, the remedy is the ballot box. Don’t elect those officials.

This country works best when we use the courts to protect our own constitutional rights, rather than to prevent someone else from exercising theirs. If someone is prevented, by a public official, from exercising their free exercise right to pray in a public forum, they have a court remedy. However, just because someone doesn’t feel like hearing such a prayer doesn’t give them the right to run to court to prevent someone else from exercising their rights, which is what happened here.

I am less sanguine about this than most of us here. I lean more toward Frank and the WELS. I am not as rigid as WELS (who, when I was a member there, wouldn’t even pray with other Lutherans not in fellowship with them; which made for some uncomfortable sayings of grace before Christmas dinner), but I do think that independent chaplains are a really good idea. The idea that a clregyman from any religion should pray, or do anything in a manner contrary to his conscience and doctrine, for the sake of politics and/or cultural unity strikes me as a really bad idea.

I also have to disagree with Don S a little bit here. The free exercise clause of the 1st Amendment guarantees the right of any private citizen, acting as an individual, to practice his/her religion (or no religion) as he or she sees fit. But I am not as convinced that “establishment” of religion is limited to trying to start an official state religion. I do think that for a public official to “lead” in prayer can be to act in his public, governmental capacity. Whether this exercise of public leadership rises to the level of “establishment of religion”, for me at least, depends on the circumstances. I haven’t read this case, so I don’t know all the details, but there are, for example, certain municipalities around Detroit in which prayers to Allah from public officials would not be unexpected. And I think those would require me to withdraw, which would possibly insult the other people there, which might negatively impact on me. And why should I have to suffer any negative impact from the conduct of a public official acting in his public capacity on account of religion?

#11 Don

“Would you not agree that we would be a lot better off if we worried more about what we do and are permitted to do, rather than trying to restrict, through court action, what other people are doing?”

curious how you would overlay this idea of yours on the topics of gay marriage, and legalized prostitution, drugs, legalized divorce, unmarried couples cohabiting, and pornography along with related zoning laws.

As one of my elders who was formerly a Baptist deacon for 20 years once said, “Baptists want prayers in public school – as long as they are Baptist prayers.”

Imagine living in Utah when you make pronouncements about public prayers.

Rlewer @ 14: I understand the difficulty of living in Utah as a non-Mormon. In Utah is where you probably get the closest to having a legitimate 1st Amendment case against the government for establishment of a state religion at times. But even so, I believe that is a pretty high bar. The founders were talking about establishment of religion in the context of the Anglican Church in England, the Catholic Church in Spain, the Lutheran Church in Germany, in the 18th Century, when the leadership of those churches were intertwined with the government and they received substantial tax revenue. Even in Utah, I don’t think there is a legitimate establishment case to be made very often. Just because we don’t like something, doesn’t give us the right to run to court and stop it on constitutional grounds. To have liberty ourselves, we need to be tolerant of the liberties of other folks. Unfortunately, we have lost that concept to a great degree in the past 50 years, to our great detriment, particularly as Christians.

#17 don

If i understand you respectfully and reading your posts over time, you seem to position yourself as a jacksonian democrat and believe that the majority should rightfully rule . you also seem to feel that laws passed by propositions would probably be the ideal form of legislation.

here we differ. I am a definite small-r republican. I really like the idea that constitutions should be written to limit government power, and all power not granted to the government are the “natural rights” of the people. This means that constitutions should never have embedded in them the granting of specific rights to the people,and EXPECIALLY not prohibitions in the constitution of public rights. only prohibitions against government power. this is exactly why our constitution is so seemingly vague, the founders felt that specifically enumerating rights would imply the limitation of those rights or at least delimit them. this would have run contrary to their views of constitutional republicanism.

In this system, ideally, the rights and freedoms of an unpopular minority (think blacks, gays,jews, jehovah´s witnesses, neo-nazis, indians, arab-americans, japanese or german americans during wwI&II ) would be preserved ESPECIALLY when 95% of the populace was antagonistic towards the idea.

this is what we want as christians in viewing our society moving towards increased pluralism religiously is it not?

#19 kerner

light-bulb-comes-on. the issue is not constitutionality as don frames it. the real issue is one of christian witness vs. cultivating the idea of a small-g “god-fearing” nation where it is impled to all that any higher power at all is as good as the next one in the interest of civic morality/religiosity.

so the issue is misframed by focusing on constitutionality or even tradition or history of the usa as a “christian” or “christianity-based” nation.

FW @ 18: No, I don’t think you have characterized my position correctly. Yes, I do believe that, in a properly functioning democratic/republican form of government, the majority, which will typically be a majority of elected representatives, should rule. Once we vitiate this principle, by frequently overturning majority rule on the basis of superseding law (Constitutional, international, or otherwise), people lose faith that their government is responsive to them, and serves them, and you no longer have an effective government. You have a de facto oligarchy, run by the judiciary. However, I firmly believe in the Constitution, and its enumerated civil liberties, guaranteed to individuals is paramount to majority rule, as you do.

In other words, the Constitution is a fence, so to speak, beyond which the government may not move, in order to protect the fundamental liberties of the individual.

If the government takes an action which infringes an individual’s civil liberty in some respect, I wholeheartedly agree that the individual has every right to seek redress against that action through the courts.

Here’s the problem. When, instead of directly asserting our liberties to do something (worship, speak freely, be secure in our homes, etc.), we assert our rights not to be made uncomfortable by the actions of another, by going to court to prevent that other person from acting, we cross the line. Individual liberties intersect. At some point, our right to act will impact someone else. Example–someone’s right to freely speak on a public sidewalk means that many others have to hear him. If we are all to be truly free, we also all have to be very tolerant of the actions of others which may be disagreeable to us. When we lose our ability to be tolerant, and run to court to stop the actions of others on the ground that they are making us uncomfortable and thus somehow infringing our constitutional rights, then we cease to be truly free ourselves.

In the present case, if the court had ruled for the plaintiff, the name of God would have been further removed from the public square. We may disagree politically with the commissioners in this case, and their decision to invite various members of the clergy to offer invocations at the start of meetings. But is it really a constitutional issue? Is it really impacting the civil liberties of any particular person? Is it “establishing religion” within the meaning of the First Amendment? I think not, and if someone has to leave the room for a moment during the invocation because of a personal feeling of uncomfortableness, then so be it. That person can prevail upon the commissioners, using the political process, to change their policy if it bothers them sufficiently. But they don’t have a constitutional right not to be bothered. This principle is perhaps more important as we move to a more pluralistic society, lest because of our differences, we prohibit more and more conduct in the public square because it makes us feel uncomfortable.

FW @ 20:

I disagree that the issue is “mis-framed”. Rather, there are multiple parts to the issue. I was emphasizing the Constitutional aspects of the issue, and opining that we are not well served when we entertain notions of prohibiting conduct of others via court order because we feel “uncomfortable”. Of course, Kerner raises other equally valid issues concerning what our response should be politically to these types of things.