While a 4th Circuit panel considers the challenge to Forsyth County, NC's practice of opening council meetings with sectarian prayer, one of the issues they will be pondering is whether an open policy with no oversight really does lead in practice to invocations that are offensive and undermine religious liberty principles. One of the 3 judges in particular seemed skeptical that one rude minister, offering one troubling prayer, should invalidate an entire policy.
I wonder if he will hear news of what happened in Minnesota on Friday, when a controversial minister opened the state house's session with an invocation that left representatives from both parties scrambling to apologize . House Republicans spent an hour trying to figure out how to proceed, ultimately offering up a re-do, with a chaplain willing to say a more appropriately inclusive prayer.
Salon has video of the prayer and reports on some of the immediate fallout:
The Republican Speaker of the House, Kurt Zellers, was quick to denounce [Bradlee] Dean's remarks, telling his House colleagues: "Members, I can only ask for your forgiveness. That type of person will never ever be allowed on this House floor again as long as I have the honor of serving as speaker.”
How is he going to keep that promise? At least in this case, it is already the policy of the Minnesota House that invocations be non-sectarian, a rule that Dean purposely and directly violated. Wouldn't a policy that actively encourages specific faiths to be uplifted offer even more problems?
Better, and safer still, would be an approach that ends the practice of government prayer altogether. Just because it's legislative prayer is constitutional under certain circumstances doesn't mean it's a good idea. Let's allow ministers to pray as exclusively as they want, but not give them the government's podium and microphone to stand behind while they do it.
