Like a Little Prayer

What’s Wrong Today:

Remember when conservatives used to be against “activist judges”? Now, they like their shiny new toy, the Roberts Court, particularly after their decision in Town of Greece, NY vs. Galloway, et al. From the NYT:

In a major decision on the role of religion in government, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the Constitution allows town boards to start their sessions with sectarian prayers

The 5-to-4 vote divided the court’s conservative members from its liberal ones, and their opinions reflected different views of the role of faith in public life, in contemporary society and in the founding of the Republic

The WaPo quoted Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion:

Ceremonial prayer is but a recognition that, since this Nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be understood by precepts far beyond the authority of government

Justices Thomas and Scalia differed. They said that to the extent coercion is relevant to whether there is a violation of the Constitution’s establishment clause, “it is actual legal coercion that counts.” Peer pressure, they said, is not enough.

Justice Kagan differed from the three conservatives: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Month in and month out for over a decade, prayers steeped in only one faith, addressed toward members of the public, commenced meetings [in Greece NY] to discuss local affairs and distribute government benefits

She compared it — using the text of some of the prayers offered before the council’s meetings — to the idea of a judge inviting a minister to open a hearing with a prayer about “the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ” or an election official reciting the Lord’s Prayer before opening the polls. Kagan wrote:

I would hold that the government officials responsible for the above practices — that is, for prayer repeatedly invoking a single religion’s beliefs in these settings — crossed a constitutional line

The facts of the case: A citizen is offended by her government requiring her to listen to a prayer with explicit references to a god she doesn’t believe in as a condition to attending a public meeting. She asks her government to refrain from doing that: A simple request that could have been accommodated in any number of ways. By having the council members choose to meet privately to pray before the meeting, by having a simple moment of non-denominational silent reflection before the public meeting, by working to make sure the opening “prayer” is a rotating event, for which all denominations are invited and for which non-believers also have a slot periodically to use those moments for some other form of statement.

But no. The town fathers say we’re going to continue to pray to Jesus whether or not attendees at our meetings believe in him. And our little town is going to spend taxpayer money litigating our right to do this all the way to the Supreme Court.

This kind of arrogance of government has now been validated by the Supreme Court. This is now what the First Amendment means.

Public meetings for the purpose of conducting government business are just that, business meetings. They are not an appropriate venue for conducting an organized prayer. If individuals should feel the need to pray silently to themselves, go for it.

It doesn’t matter if opening meetings with a prayer has been a long standing tradition; that is not relevant. Slavery and other forms of discrimination were also long standing traditions, yet very wrong.

There is a vast chasm between what goes on at state legislative proceedings and the much more intimate business transacted at the local level. These are small meetings where everyone often knows everyone else. These are neighbors, friends, and acquaintances. And they know whether you are praying or not. They see whether you bow your head or not. Later, they hear the prayer-giver lecturing you on your “ignorance” of the issue before the council, or in fact, of the American system. And, because they share the majority view, they feel a little freer to question whether or not YOU belong.

Worse, that the Greece NY town officials would make a statement that atheists were welcome to give an opening prayer shows the true level of their insensitivity. This decision should have been 9-0 that prayer is a private matter and should not be intertwined with government business at the local level.

Atheists remain the one group among us against whom discrimination is viewed as appropriate. A decision does not become defensible merely because atheists are permitted to give the prayer. A bit of a contradiction in terms, isn’t it?

What’s wrong is the Supreme Court’s clear message that Greece, NY and other towns can now say: “This is not YOUR town council; it’s OUR town council.” It’s the same message African-Americans got from the Confederate flag on the statehouse in South Carolina. In Greece, New York, it means, “This is OUR town, not YOURS. Don’t get any ideas.”

Picture this: Out of respect for those feelings being expressed in a prayer, the sentiments of which are totally foreign to oneself, you respectfully leave the room. You return to questioning looks. What could you possibly disagree with in our simple prayer?

Notice just how well this plays into “us vs. them”?

In public grammar school in the 1950’s, the Wrongologist said the Lord’s Prayer, along with his classmates. Our teacher was Catholic, but the prayer recited included the Book of Common Prayer doxology, which the Catholics (at that time) did not use.

Never mind that there were Jewish kids in the class. This was a violation of the establishment clause of the Constitution, but who knew?

The most important course that the Wrongologist took in college was US Constitutional law with the late Prof. Walter Giles. Studying with Giles informs this blog on a daily basis. He would have hated the Supreme Court’s decision in Town of Greece, NY vs. Galloway, et al.

Giles was famous for his annual Martini Lecture:

Every spring, he gave the Madison Martini Lecture. He would stroll into the room with a portable bar — glasses, tumbler, jigger, ice, Seagram’s gin, Cinzano vermouth, olives — and launch into the day’s lesson: President James Madison’s contribution to the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the system of checks and balances

Dr. Giles expected much from his students but promised much in return. We studied most of the Supreme Court decisions that had a bearing on Constitutional questions. You had to be able to stand up in class when called upon, and argue either side of the case in question. Giles prefaced every semester’s thick syllabus with a quotation from US Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo:

In the end the great truth will have been learned, that the quest is greater than what is sought, the effort finer than the prize, or rather that the effort is the prize, the victory cheap and hollow were it not for the rigor of the game

Enough digression. One of the great disillusionments of this age is the rejection of the values we achieved in the 1960s. You remember the Sixties, when the younger generation questioned everything “the establishment” stood for. We ended up with the Voting Rights Act, civil rights, women’s rights, abortion rights and some people are still pissed about it.

And now, this prayer decision. We do not live in a Christian nation. Most of our founding fathers were Deists. We rail against religiously-run Mideast nations and then our Supreme Court approves the use of religion in our own institutions…are we any better?

Where will the dismantling of the Constitution stop? What gets your blood boiling? Where do you make your stand?

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1 Comments

Terry McKenna

I have attended meeting in Dover NJ, the prayers always infuriates me. I keep quiet, but it is an insult.

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