The Power of Prayer for Public Places

The Case: A lawsuit filed in 2008, claiming that ceremonial prayers delivered at city council meetings violate the 1st Amendment’s ‘Establishment Clause’ of the U.S. Constitution and promote Christianity to town residents.

 

The Impact: A decision in favor of those challenging the city could affect religious observances at public events and gatherings across the United States.  Prayer before school board meetings, high school athletic events, local charity events and many more could be threatened.

 

A small town in northeast New York is at the center of what legal scholars say could be one of the biggest religious freedom cases in decades, as the U.S. Supreme Court opens its 2013-14 term.  The case, the Town of Greece (N.Y.) v. Galloway, involves the town council’s practice of beginning its meetings with a prayer offered by a volunteer “chaplain of the month” — Christian and non-Christian.  This has attracted friend-of-the-court briefs from religious, secular and civil liberties organizations.  The decision to take the case and how it rules could offer new insights on how far the court headed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is prepared to go to redefine the role of religion in the public square.

 

“If the court were to rule for Galloway, it would have to abandon prior precedent, it would have to abandon hundreds of years of practice going back to the founders of our country, and put in jeopardy the many practices and events that reflect our religious heritage throughout the country,” said David Cortman, attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom – a Christian advocacy organization supporting the town of Greece.

 

Our Founders never envisioned that the 1st Amendment would become a weapon to excise Christian or traditional religious expressions from the public arena.  Today’s judicial activism has absurdly interpreted civic free exercise of religion as an unconstitutional establishment of religion … thus causing the 1st Amendment to violate itself.  Clearly, in its numerous rulings on religious issues since the 1947 decision Everson v. Board of Education, whether ruling for or against religious expressions, the Court now selectively relies on historical records and almost exclusively upon its own recent case-law precedents – the very precedents under which it has essentially rewritten the 1st Amendment.  And as a result of this misconception of the original intent of the 1st Amendment, we have violations of religious freedom.  In the 1971 decision, Lemon v. Kurtzman, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a government action “must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion.”  This meant that government could now do nothing that would give support to religious viewpoints or religious beliefs (in general).  Far from prohibiting the favoring of one particular religion, the Supreme Court decided that government could no longer favor religion at all; and in this and similar decisions, the Supreme Court has thus excluded religious speech from more and more areas of life … whether public monuments, displays of the Ten Commandments, prayer at school events, or even a “moment of silence” for students in public schools.

 

For those of you who would defend the freedom to pray in public places: If you believe in the power of prayer, it is time to earnestly pray that the Spirit of the Living God will move the hearts of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices to rule in favor of the Town of Greece (N.Y.).

 

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel