Faced with church-state criticism for opening legislative days with sectarian prayer, Senate leadership is recommending that the Hawaii State Senate do away with the practice altogether.
"We respect everybody's different levels of faith and the different religions that they support," said state Senate President Shan Tsutsui (D, Kahului). "We don't think by us not having an invocation at the beginning of session — we're not making any type of statement, but rather we're respecting each individual's religious beliefs."
…
Senators… believed it would be better to end the invocations than to ask clergy to water the messages down with restrictions that might be difficult to enforce. Some senators thought it would be problematic to invite clergy and then tell them not to mention Jesus Christ or Mohammed, for example, in their prayers.
