Constitutionally Correct Praying

The summer following my first year in seminary, I had the privilege of serving my home church as youth director. My first day on the job, the senior pastor asked me to represent him at the City Council meeting that very afternoon, and offer the opening prayer. When I walked into the Council Chambers, the members (most of whom belonged to our congregation) greeted me both respectfully and affectionately. So, I gave them a rousing prayer on working together as an expression of gratitude to God, and returned to my seat full of myself for the contribution I had just made to the tone of the deliberations which were to follow. In spite of my contagious spirituality, however, our guys started right in on each other and hollered their way through the rest of the meeting, with enthusiasm and without shame.

If we add to this little story countless others about government meetings moving along swimmingly without the benefit of any prayers, we just might begin to wonder about the efficacy of civic prayers at all. And we might begin to question whether it is any longer worth the effort to overcome the problems of making prayer even possible in such settings. Years ago, the United States Supreme Court determined (at least, according to prevailing interpretation) that only generic prayers in governmental meetings are acceptable. More recently, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to the effect that public prayers couched in the language of specific religious traditions are flat-out unconstitutional. These are huge hurdles to overcome.

And yet, a number of local councils across the country seem undaunted in the face of them, as they cavalierly deny that Christian majorities have any obligation to accept the renderings of secular courts at all. Prayers “in Jesus’ name” are still bouncing off the walls of their meeting rooms. My guess is that at least some of these representatives’ constituencies will start taking a second look at this hard-headedness when Christians in their communities are no longer in the majority. Hopefully, they will wise up even sooner.

It is no wonder that many people now argue that it would be best for religious believers to get out of the business of praying at government meetings, period. On the face of it, there is something to be said for taking this view. Religious leaders are justifiably uncomfortable having to censor their own prayers in order that nobody gets upset at their mention of Jesus, or Amithaba, or Allah, or Whomever. And civic leaders are justifiably frustrated over having to provide opportunities for every religious tradition to contribute a prayer publically at some time or another, or having to ensure that every public prayer somehow turns out to be non-sectarian.

The American Civil Liberties Union is on record as saying that accomodating all religious traditions at meetings of governmental bodies is tantamount to abandoning the First Amendments’s articulation of a neutral stance toward religion. Further, the ACLU argues, going this route leads inevitably to discrimination against some religious traditions by leaving them out, however inadvertantly; there are simply too many of them to account for easily. However, the Rutherford Institute, a legal advocacy group for religion in society, looks at both issues differently. To the Institute, the First Amendment also prohibits actions that inhibit the free expression of religious beliefs. And the organization sees no problems with clergy from a variety of faiths being recognized by governmental bodies to offer prayers expressive of their respective traditions.

That organizations like the ACLU and the Rutherford Institute have become so involved in an issue like prayers at city council meetings should say to us that the easiest way out of the current controversies may not in fact be the best way at all. I continue to harbor doubts that being prayed over will make officials govern us any better. But our right to ask that they do just this, and to use prayer as a way of imploring divine assistance for them as they strive to do it, is something about which I have no doubt whatever, and neither does the Rutherford Institute. But the ACLU is less naïve than the Institute is about the many difficulties and dangers we must face as we express this right in ways respectful of everyone’s convictions of conscience. The Institute needs to be more forthcoming about this, even as it continues to remind us that these are the difficulties and dangers that accompany every form of honest religious expression in a pluralistic society, difficulties and dangers that every American should gladly and gratefully acknowledge.