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Governmental Prayer

 

Utah Atheists  recruiting medley of prayer-givers		FEB 06, 2001
Albrecht Dürer Home News -  ARCHIVE Prayers Participate!	They want Satanists, Druids, psychics to pray at County Council -- By Elaine Jarvik Deseret News staff writer       How about Druids, Chris Allen suggests. Or maybe the Ku Klux Klan, or the Satanists? These are some of the folks Allen is recruiting to offer prayers at Salt Lake County Council meetings.      The County Council last month voted to begin every meeting with a moment of prayer, and that has Allen and fellow members of Utah Atheists coming up with a litany of possible supplicants.      "We want to recruit people from the New Age group, people with tarot cards, psychics, crystal healers. We need to get Native Americans who are involved in the peyote cult," Allen told members of Utah Atheists at their monthly meeting. "I feel pretty confident the Pagan Student Association at the U. would get involved."      Faced with so many unconventional prayers and prayer givers, Utah Atheists hope, the County Council will soon realize that it's just too uncomfortable to begin its meetings appealing to a higher power.      Meanwhile, Salt Lake attorney Brian Barnard is also "working on filing some litigation," he told the Utah Atheists. Barnard was the group's featured speaker at its February meeting.  "You can't attack it head on, because the U.S. Supreme Court and the State Supreme Court say you can have prayers before public meetings," Barnard told the group. "The way to attack it is to show the County Council the folly of their ways: 'You want diversity, we'll give you diversity!' "      The new County Council voted 6-3 on the prayer motion and delegated to one of its administrative assistants the job of making sure the prayers represent a cross-section of beliefs. One of council members voting against the public prayer motion was Joe Hatch. Hatch said "they should call it the Brian Barnard Full Employment" motion, Barnard drolly noted. Barnard has represented other litigants in separation- of-church- and-state battles, including Utah Atheists member Tom Snyder, who in 1994 was barred from offering a prayer at the opening of a Murray City Council meeting. Continue	"Our mother, who art in heaven (if indeed there is a heaven and if there is a god that takes a woman's form), hallowed be thy name," Snyder's prayer began. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled in 1998 that Murray City had the right to exclude his prayer, and a year later the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal. His federal lawsuit thrown out, Snyder filed a separate lawsuit in Utah's 3rd District Court, where he is seeking "nominal" damages"*.       Snyder tried to offer the same prayer before a Salt Lake City Council meeting in 1994, eventually causing the city to discontinue opening prayers altogether.      Allowing only certain kinds of prayers blurs the line between government and religion — a line that is necessary so that anyone has the right to free expression of a religion, or the free expression of no religion, Barnard explained.      Ironically, he added, when the Salt Lake City Council did allow prayers it issued guidelines that forced the prayers to be "generic and bland." (Those guidelines required that the prayers be non-denominational, should not offend anyone and should be non-proselytizing.) This too blurred the line between church and state, he said.      Not everyone at the group's monthly meeting agreed with the decision to recruit prayer givers from obviously fringe groups such as polygamists, Goths and skinheads. "If we present something clearly absurd, then it will be easy to dismiss," noted one member. Maybe, he said, the group should issue "an atheist statement."      Allen and others disagreed. "We took the direct approach before" and lost, Allen said. E-MAIL: jarvik@desnews.com Reprinted with permission. Original article from Feb 6, 2001 is at http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,250009169,00.html?  * Erratum:  The original article reported "$3 million in punitive damages." This should have read "minimal damagers." -- corrected by  Elaine Jarvik 2-7-1.

 

"Faith is the proposition that something is true even though no evidence for it exists."   "Faith is the MISTAKEN proposition that something is true  IN SPITE of evidence to the contrary!"		One person's faith contradicts another's faith, so it can be of no value.
"And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.		But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. " Matthew 6:6