In what should have been a unanimous decision, a slim majority of Supreme Court justices (5-4) ruled that a town’s practice of starting legislative sessions with prayer does not violate the First Amendment, and those prayers can even include the name of Jesus Christ. This is a welcome push-back against secular activists who have sought to forbid prayers mentioning Christ and who desire freedom from being “offended.” Writing for the majority, Anthony Kennedy observed that the U.S. Congress appointed chaplains just days after approving the First Amendment, so it is obvious that the Establishment Clause does not forbid such a thing. He wrote, “An insistence on nonsectarian or ecumenical prayer as a single, fixed standard is not consistent with the tradition of legislative prayer outlined in the Court’s case. ... The Congress that drafted the First Amendment would have been accustomed to invocations containing explicitly religious themes … The decidedly Christian nature of these prayers must not be dismissed as the relic of a time when our Nation was less pluralistic than it is today. Congress continues to permit its appointed and visiting chaplains to express themselves in a religious idiom. It acknowledges our growing diversity not by proscribing sectarian content but by welcoming ministers of many creeds.” Kennedy said that “offense does not equate coercion,” dismissing atheists’ argument that they are offended by Christian prayers. All of that is well and good, but at the same time, four dissenting Supreme Court justices would have forbidden explicitly Christian prayers, and even Kennedy said there are limits to what can be said in prayer, specifically singling out prayers that “threaten damnation or preach conversion.” The only true friends of religious liberty on the Court are Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, both of who thought that Kennedy did not go broadly enough in support of prayer. (Friday Church News Notes, May 9, 2014, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) Comments are closed.
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