Texas officials' pre-meeting prayers draw complaints
By The Associated Press
01.28.02
WEATHERFORD, Texas — For as long as most folks can remember, Parker County commissioners have started their meetings with heads bowed and eyes closed.
Whoever leads the invocation — County Judge Mark Riley, a commissioner or volunteer audience member — rises from his seat, but doesn't ask anyone else to stand. After the prayer, which lasts 30 seconds or so, county officials get down to business.
"For me personally, I believe in prayer and have a strong faith," Riley said. "I believe prayer has a calming effect for those who believe in it and gives guidance. To those who don't, it should have no effect on them."
But a resident is challenging the subject of worship before government meetings in Weatherford, a town of 17,500 about 20 miles west of Fort Worth. Dick Hogan, treasurer of the Texas chapter of American Atheists, also sued the county in 1996 over a Nativity scene on the courthouse lawn.
Parker County commissioners are being insensitive and intolerant of other religions during the invocations, said Hogan, who recently wrote commissioners a letter demanding they stop using "Jesus Christ" during prayers before meetings.
"If there was a way to raise this as a legal issue, I would," he said.
"There's all types of people in Weatherford that find that type of prayer offensive from a government agency," Hogan said. "No one is trying to deny them the right to proclaim Christianity individually ... but it's not necessary during a government meeting."
Controversy about prayer at government meetings and events has cropped up in other Texas cities, including Kerrville, about 60 miles northwest of San Antonio.
Kerrville City Councilwoman Nancy Banks recently contested the mention of Jesus in the invocations before council meetings. She said the prayers are routinely given by Christian clergy, excluding residents of other faiths.
Mayor Stephen Fine rejected Banks' request that the prayers be directed at a "supreme being" such as God, Lord or Master instead of Jesus.
Kerrville City Attorney Kevin Laughlin said council members cannot tell someone what to say — or not to say — but can ask clergy to be sensitive to various faiths. And city officials have tried to include rabbis and others in the lineup of those leading the prayers.
"The current practice appears to be legal as long as the prayers are not used to proselytize or advance one faith or to disparage another faith," Laughlin told the council Jan. 23 in a memo.
In Marsh v. Chambers, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Nebraska Legislature's practice of beginning sessions with an official prayer did not violate the Constitution's establishment clause, Laughlin said. Justices focused on historical evidence and said the prayers were a "tolerable acknowledgment" of widely held beliefs.
Monte Akers, director of legal services for the Texas Municipal League, said it's unclear if the Supreme Court case would protect governmental bodies that traditionally have not prayed before meetings but recently started — such as after the September terrorist attacks.
David Perdue, past president of both the County Judges and Commissioners Association of Texas and the Texas Association of Counties, said the organizations do not take a formal position on pre-meeting prayers. But generally, the Knox County judge said, it's not done.
In Knox County, commissioners occasionally will take a moment of silence to honor someone who has died, but they do not open their sessions with prayer. Not that Perdue would object.
"I think it ought to be done for every public event in the whole wide world. I think it's absolutely ridiculous that it's been struck down in courts and schools," Perdue said. "Those of us that have a strong belief ... answer to our maker. If you can't praise his name, what can you do?"
Proponents say praying before meetings is a free-speech issue that differs from organized school prayer, which involves a captive audience of minors. Organized prayer has been banned in public schools since a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
"Our meeting is truly an open forum," Riley said. "Nobody is held captive, and it's all adults."
However, others say any prayer at a governmental body meeting violates the separation of church and state — even nondenominational prayers, which give preference to religion over nonbelief in a supreme being.
"It is the government telling us when and how to pray," said Melvin P. Straus, chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union chapter in El Paso. "The government is telling you that you are moved to pray, and if not, behave as if you are."