| Federal judge: N.C. county council's sectarian prayers unconstitutional |
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| By Bob Allen | |||
| Tuesday, November 10, 2009 | |||
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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (ABP) -- A federal judge is recommending that a North Carolina county be ordered to stop allowing sectarian prayers at meetings of its board of commissioners.
Trevor Sharpe, a magistrate judge for the U.S. Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, recommended Nov. 9 that the court issue an injunction to prevent prayers that he found overwhelmingly sectarian at meetings of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners. A policy adopted in 2007 allows the board to invite a minister to offer an invocation or prayer to solemnize proceedings. The policy invites local ministers who respond to an invitation to offer prayer on a first-come, first-served basis. It advises the religious leader to offer an invitation "according to the dictates of [the leader's] own conscience, but requests the prayer opportunity "not be exploited as an effort" to convert others and asks participants to "maintain a spirit of respect and ecumenism." In practice, the judge found, the prayers overwhelmingly mentioned Jesus Christ, having the effect of favoring Christianity over other religions. The county had argued that the prayers offered by visiting ministers were their private speech, but Sharpe said the prayers in Forsyth County were government speech subject to the First Amendment's ban on establishment of religion. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the recommendation "a tremendous victory for religious liberty and American pluralism."
"We are an incredibly diverse nation, and the government should never play favorites when it comes to religion," said Lynn, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. Stephen Corts, pastor of Center Grove Baptist Church in Clemmons, N.C., is chairman of North Carolina Partnership for Religious Liberty, a citizens group formed in response to the two-year-old controversy, told the Winston-Salem Journal that Sharp's recommendation "is not hopeful," but the group is prepared to pursue the case all the way to the Supreme Court. -30- This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
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The constitution also prohibits congress from inhibiting the free exercise of religion. Therefore, if prayer at a council meeting is not an establishment of religion in and of itself, then to limit the content of the prayer is, in fact, an abridgment of the free exercise rights of the man doing the praying.
By allowing prayer but not allowing the man praying to pray his own pray, the court has, in effect, violated both the free exercise and establishment clause; the free exercise clause by prohibiting the prayer from exercising his own prayer and the establishment clause by dictating the nature of prayers that shall be prayed - namely, a ecumenical, vapid, meaningless prayer.
I guess that is fitting for the people who support such twisted nonsense, since their religion is, in fact, ecumenical, vapid and meaningless.
But the framers of the constitution didn't allow an establishment of religion that bows to all religious parties. They allowed no establishment of religion whatsoever. Therefore, the only logical course is to stop the prayer altogether or get out of the way and let men pray their own prayers and let those who don't like it get over it.
Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas