Federal appeals court in Atlanta says Cobb County, GA, can continue to invite members of different religious faiths to offer prayer before commission meetings, praying as their own faith dictates, be they Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or any other faith. Americans United objects, and demands that those offering prayers be muzzled and made to pray only in a generic, least common denominator way. Here it is AU that is trying to impose a religious test, seeking to enforce by legislation a generic religion that includes all gods. The appeals court saw this for what it was.
The clergy have represented a variety of faiths, including Christianity, Islam, Unitarian Universalism, and Judaism, and their diverse prayers have, at times, included expressions of their religious faiths. … The taxpayers argue that the Establishment Clause permits only nonsectarian prayers for the meetings of the commissions, but we disagree. Marsh v. Chambers makes clear that “[t]he content of the prayer is not of concern to judges where . . . there is no indication that the prayer opportunity has been exploited to proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other, faith or belief.” 463 U.S. 783, 794–95, 103 S. Ct. 3330, 3337–38 (1983). The district court applied this standard, found that the practice of the County Commission had not been exploitive, and refused to parse the content of the prayers. The district court also found that the practice of the Planning Commission had been exploitive during 2003 and 2004 and declared that practice unconstitutional. Because there is no clear error in either finding by the district court, we refuse “to embark on a sensitive evaluation or to parse the content of a particular prayer.” Id. at 795, 103 S. Ct. at 3338. Whether invocations of “Lord of Lords” or “the God of Abraham, Issac, and Mohammed” are “sectarian” is best left to theologians, not courts of law. We affirm.
The lone dissenter demands a line be drawn, and he strangely says, “I would draw the line at state-sponsored prayer at invocations before the United States Congress and State legislatures. I therefore dissent.” And yet he is concerned that generic, state-sponsored religion is rendered without power: “When state sponsored prayer is a perfunctory and sterile exercise marking the beginning of a commission agenda, religion becomes the casualty.” That would slap down Barry Lynn’s version of appropriate public prayer, and rightly so.
1 response so far ↓
Mithun // October 28, 2008 at 6:53 pm |
It would seem that AU is advocating that all prayers conform to one religion—Unitarian Universalism (or something like it). I suppose that banning prayer would be their preference, but since precedent seems to preclude this, their plan B is an ironic attempt at fairness.