U.S. Supreme Court Held Prayer Permitted At Town Hall Meetings.

Following roll call and the Pledge of Allegiance, a small town in New York has a local clergyman deliver an invocation at its Town Board meetings. A typical prayer is: “Lord we ask you to send your spirit of servanthood upon all of us gathered here this evening to do your work for the benefit of all in our community. We ask you to bless our elected and appointed officials so they may deliberate with wisdom and act with courage. Bless the members of our community who come here to speak before the board so they may state their cause with honesty and humility. . . . Lord we ask you to bless us all, that everything we do here tonight will move you to welcome us one day into your kingdom as good and faithful servants. We ask this in the name of our brother Jesus. Amen.” But sometimes ministers speak in a distinctly Christian idiom by including in their prayers something like: “We acknowledge the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. We draw strength, vitality, and confidence from his resurrection at Easter. . . .” Some attendees objected that the prayers violated their religious and philosophical views. At one meeting, someone admonished board members she found the prayers “offensive, intolerable and an affront to a diverse community.” Subsequently the objectors brought suit in federal court alleging the town violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause by preferring Christians over other prayer givers and by sponsoring sectarian prayers. They did not seek an end to the prayer practice, but rather requested an injunction that would limit the town to “inclusive and ecumenical” prayers that referred only to a “generic God” and would not associate the government with any one faith or belief. When the case reached the United States Supreme Court, the high Court stated: “To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian would force legislatures that sponsor prayers and the courts that are asked to decide these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech, a rule that would involve government in religious matters to a far greater degree than is the case under the town’s current practice of neither editing or approving prayers in advance nor criticizing their content after the fact.” Citing to 1774 letters of John Adams and Abigail Adams, the Court noted that from the earliest days of this nation, invocations have been addressed to assemblies comprising many different creeds.  The Court concluded: “The town of Greece does not violate the First Amendment by opening its meetings with prayer that comports with our tradition and does not coerce participation by nonadherents.” (Town of Greece v. Galloway (U.S. Sup. Ct.; May 5, 2014)134 S.Ct. 1811, [188 L.Ed.2d 835].)