Tag Archives: Topic: Prayer

Heather Long at The Guardian: That is part of the grand experiment of America. But so is the ability to practice religion. Simply striking it entirely from our legislatures doesn’t honor the many faith traditions who have come to this nation seeking religious freedom.

Nate Kellum at American Thinker: Suppressing convictions of Americans because they happen to be religious in nature is unconstitutional and just plain wrong. The censorship betrays our roots as a nation. For the liberty to believe and express one’s beliefs is a freedom to which countless men have fought and died. Perhaps Costner’s courageous speech will help remind us of who we are.

NWI Times: The Republican leaders controlling the Indiana House and Senate schedules will continue starting legislative session days with a prayer, even as the U.S. Supreme Court reviews the constitutionality of the practice.

CBS: Today is the 50th anniversary of one of the Supreme Court decisions that effectively banned school-run prayer and Bible reading in public schools.

FFRF: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is asking the Howard-Suamico Board of Education in Wisconsin to reprimand a school district superintendent for exhorting parents to pray in his commencement speech at a Green Bay high school.

eMissourian: A federal judge has denied motions to dismiss a lawsuit that challenges the legality of prayers at Franklin County Commission meetings. Presiding County Commissioner John Griesheimer and Franklin County are being sued by an anonymous plaintiff, who is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Religion Clause Blog: In Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. v. Brewer, (AZ App., June 11, 2013), an Arizona state Court of Appeals held that a group of Maricopa County residents and a organization promoting church-state separation lack standing to to challenge Governor Janice Brewer’s Day of Prayer proclamations.

The Economist: It’s no wonder the second circuit found it necessary to justify its use of “legal judgment” when embarking on this adventure in casuistry. The rationale simply makes no sense. Which isn’t to say that the court reached the wrong result.

Ecumenical News: A few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn’t like,” said Brett Harvey, a lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is defending Greece. “Because the authors of the Constitution invoked God’s blessing on public proceedings, this tradition shouldn’t suddenly be deemed unconstitutional.”

Religion Clause reports and links to the text of House Resolution 351.

Washington Times: Moscow police detained 300 Muslims after President Vladimir Putin ordered a crackdown on radical Islamists ahead of next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Washington Times: California taxpayers have footed the bill for Muslim airport cabbies to have their very own prayer room and foot baths at the San Francisco International Airport.

Kyle Olsen at Townhall: How is the radical Council on American-Islamic Relations bending public school policy to its will? Two stories from Michigan tell the tale. From a CAIR press release . . .

Lake-County News Sun: New Waukegan Mayor Wayne Motley promised to bring prayer back to meetings of the City Council and he has. But with the amens, an uneasiness has crept in.

WBZT.com: As for Costner, he believes that the removal of God and prayer from public schools will have negative consequences. “Originally, they were only supposed to take away prayer in the school district before meetings — [but then] they blew it way out of proportion, taking prayers out of anything,” he said, noting that teachers aren’t even allowed to participate in invocation events before the school day begins.

Washington Times: An atheist group is pointing fingers at the school board for a South Carolina valedictorian who ripped up his prepared remarks at a graduation ceremony and instead recited the Lord’s Prayer. The Freedom From Religion Foundation said the Pickens County School District is actually at fault . . .

King5.com: Island County Commission Chairwoman Kelly Emerson is a strong believer in prayer. So much so, she asked the commission to consider praying before each meeting.

Alan Sears at Alliance Defending Freedom: Last week,  as Breitbart notes, “… the Supreme Court granted review in what could be the biggest religious liberty victory for Americans of faith in decades,” when it agreed – at the request of Alliance Defending Freedom – to hear a case on public invocations in which the defendants are represented by our ministry’s attorneys.

Religion Clause Blog: Last Saturday the Louisiana legislature gave final passage to HB 724 that encourages schools to allow students to use school space for prayer. The bill provides . . .

Nathan Cherry at Engage Family Minute: But here’s the thing about prayer: you simply cannot eliminate it! Prayer isn’t something that can be legislated out of the moral fiber of Americans with deeply held religious beliefs. You cannot simply turn prayer off and overwrite it with some politically correct “moment of silence.” That moment of silence for every follower of Jesus almost without fail turns into an opportunity to talk with God.

WYFF4.com: A school district under pressure to keep prayer out of meetings and gatherings got an unexpected delivery from one high school valedictorian. Saturday, at Clemson’s Littlejohn Coliseum, Liberty High Valedictorian Roy Costner IV took his speech to the podium, and in front of the crowd, tore it up.

Christian News Network: Officials in a small Washington town have decided not to prohibit the mentioning of Jesus’ name in city council prayers.

KIROTV (includes video – May 17th): The Oak Harbor City Council may face legal action for letting people pray before public meetings.

The Advocate: HB724, sponsored by state Rep. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, goes to the governor’s desk after being signed by legislature leadership.

Champion Newspapers: In Chino Valley, the fire and school boards and Chino city council have such invocations. Chino Hills dropped them on advice of its attorney and satisfied its faith by conducting meetings under the large motto above the council dais, “In God We Trust.”

Whidbey News Times: Business meetings of the Island County Board of Commissioners may soon begin with a dash of the divine. At the request of Chairwoman Kelly Emerson, the board is scheduled to discuss next week whether or not the formal Monday meetings should begin with a prayer.

Brett Harvey on Intersection of Faith and Reason with Frank Sontag | MP3 audio 16:34 mins | Brett Harvey, Joel Oster, Who Said That?: A Simple Question That May Change the Way Courts View Legislative Prayer, Federalist Society Engage Volume 14, Issue 1 February 2013 | Town of Greece v. Galloway information page

The Economist: As puffed up as the sense of outrage is from the separationists, the overbaked pieties of parties defending the town’s monthly religious exercises are even more exaggerated. “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” says David Cortman of the Alliance Defending Freedom. Nothing, Mr Cortman contends, should interfere with “this sacred practice” of public prayer. However the six Catholics and three Jews on the Supreme Court handle this case, we can rest assured that more sanctimony and unprincipled grasping at straws is on its way. (links to ADF Media site)

KLFY.com: A Louisiana lawmaker is trying to secure a piece of legislation that would allow public school students to pray before and after school, even inviting religious leaders on campus to assist.

Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review (May 21): “No one confuses sessions of Congress with a church service.” You can say that again. Brett Harvey, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom makes this point to me in an interview for National Review Online, about the case of an upstate New York town’s desire to pray before town-council meetings. Yesterday the Supreme Court agreed to hear the town of Greece’s case after a Second Circuit Appeals Court ruling found that because the town has predominantly Christian clergy, it needs to import non-Christians to lead the town council in prayer so non-Christians do not “feel like outsiders.”

Amy Kotlarz at Catholic Globe (CNS): Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal organization founded in 1994 that advocates for the religious liberty of Americans and people around the world, contends that the town did not regulate the content of the prayers, permitted citizens of any religious tradition — or no tradition — to volunteer to say prayers, and did not discriminate in who was selected as “prayer-givers.” Alliance Defending Freedom is representing the Town of Greece on a pro bono basis . . . “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” said a statement from David Cortman, the alliance’s senior counsel. “The Founders prayed while drafting our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court has ruled that public prayer is part of the ‘history and tradition of this country.’ America continues this cherished practice.”

Marci Hamilton at Justia.com: They have the Alliance Defense Fund representing them, and an amicus brief has been filed on their behalf by the Foundation for Moral Law. (That foundation is led by Judge Roy Moore, who belligerently violated the Establishment Clause by bringing his own two-ton granite rendition of a version of the Ten Commandments into the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court). Other amici include the Liberty Institute and the National Legal Foundation, which advertises itself as a “Christian public interest law firm”.  It is no secret that these groups are aggressively seeking to re-introduce prayer in public schools, a movement that includes many who insist that this is a “Christian country.”

The New American: As in past years, prayer took its rightful place during the May 24 graduation ceremony at Lincoln County High School in Stanford, Kentucky, despite the intense efforts of a contingent of students and local residents who tried to put a stop to it. According to Central Kentucky News, senior class president Jonathan Hardwick received an extended standing ovation after delivering the traditional graduation prayer, which was affirmed with a chorus of “Amens” from many moms, dads, and grandparents in attendance.

Joe Infranco at NY Daily News: “To pray or not to pray?” That is the question the Supreme Court will answer after agreeing to hear a case pitting the Town of Greece in western New York against two of its residents. Fortunately, America’s religious heritage has already answered this question affirmatively. On Sept. 7, 1774, in Philadelphia, the Rev. Jacob Duché delivered the first prayer of the Continental Congress, before representatives from 13 states. He concluded with a brief invocation to “the merits of Jesus Christ, Thy Son and our Savior.”

Angela Lu at World Magazine: Jeremy Tedesco, senior legal counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, said groups like the FFRF lead schools to believe that any religious speech in school ceremonies is illegal, and consequently their knee-jerk reaction is to shut it down. But the students’ private speech is protected by the First Amendment, and when student graduation speakers are chosen through a neutral process, like by GPA or student council leadership, the student has autonomy from the school to speak about whatever they want. “As long as the school not does not encourage them to include or exclude religious content, if the student decides to express their religious beliefs or say a prayer, no one would think the school sponsors religious belief,” Tedesco said. “It’s not the school speaking, it’s the private speech of the student.”

U.S. News and World Report: Originally administered in the immediate aftermath of World War II, The American Soldier studies were conducted by the Army’s Information and Education Division. An upcoming analysis of that data, to be published in the Journal of Religion and Health, finds when soldiers reported that battles became “more frightening,” as many as 72 percent of them turned to prayer as their primary source of motivation. When battles were less frightening, just 42 percent of soldiers regularly prayed for motivation.

The New American: But Joel Oster of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which is representing the town of Greece in the case, said that the appeals court ruling forces the city to become a prayer monitor in its meetings, and turns the reverent tradition of prayer into a government-supervised affirmative action program. “Since this nation’s founding, public meetings have been opened with prayers offered according to the conscience of the speaker,” noted Oster. “There is no legal reason why a town cannot engage in this practice today with people from within its own community. The district court rightly affirmed the constitutionality of the town’s policy.” He added that secular groups with a grudge against Christianity “cannot be allowed to force local governments to engage in strange hoops and hurdles that effectively eliminate prayers by making them too difficult to take place.”
Oster pointed out that the U.S. Constitution “has never required any local government to engage in such gymnastics to have prayer, as is clearly seen by the prayers of America’s Founding Fathers. Prayer-givers have a right protected by the First Amendment to engage in speech that reflects their own conscience and religion during such prayers. That does not make the prayers an endorsement by the town itself of any particular religion.” ADF attorney Brett Harvey told National Review . . . In taking the case to the Supreme Court, the ADF has been joined by attorney Thomas Hungar, whom Ken Klukowski of the Family Research Council called “one of the most accomplished Supreme Court litigators in the nation. [more]

Toronto Sun: A mayor’s prayer prior to council meetings in Saguenay, Que., does not compromise municipality’s neutrality, the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled Monday.

NJ.com: The case — Greece, NY v. Galloway, Susan — could have a lasting affect on local board meetings across the country, including municipalities in South Jersey like West Deptford and Elk, where township committee meetings are regularly opened with the mayor and board leading residents in reciting the Lord’s Prayer, a prayer central to Christianity.

CentralKYNews: Despite the opposition of at least six students, Lincoln County High School kept to its tradition of student-led prayer during its graduation ceremony Friday.

Seattle Times: The town is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based group that presses faith-based cases in courts nationwide. ADF senior counsel David Cortman said the framers of the Constitution prayed while drafting the Bill of Rights. “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” Cortman said.

God Discussion: Last year an appeals court in Greece, New York ruled that prayers given by a Christian minister at government functions is unconstitutional. The Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom appealed and the high-court ruling, expected by June 2014, will resolve conflicting appeals-court rulings about religious expression.

Freedom from Religion Foundation: The Freedom From Religion Foundation has renewed its objections to constitutional violations occurring aboard U.S. Navy ships. In a May 20 letter to Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, FFRF Staff Attorney Andrew Seidel urged Mabus to order an end to the practice of broadcasting official nightly prayers over ships’ loudspeakers.

Brett Harvey at Alliance Defending Freedom: Is the government obligated to control the way people pray in public? The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide this very question. You see, the Town of Greece, NY has been sued because, when they open their town council meetings, they refused to censor the prayers of citizens who volunteered to deliver the opening invocation.

The Baptist Standard: David Cortman, senior counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the town, told the Post the framers of the Constitution prayed while drafting the Bill of Rights. “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” he said. The Supreme Court case, Town of Greece vs. Galloway, will be argued this fall.

CNS on CatholicPhilly.com: “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” said a statement from David Cortman, the alliance’s senior counsel. “The Founders prayed while drafting our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court has ruled that public prayer is part of the ‘history and tradition of this country.’ America continues this cherished practice.”

Rick Garnett at Mirror of Justice: First, I think it would be a good thing if the possibility Eugene raises – i.e., that the Court might re-examine the so-called “endorsement test” — came to pass. I think the criticisms directed at that test in Steven Smith’s 1987 article had and have force. Next, even if the justices leave the “endorsement test” in place, I hope they do not follow the Second Circuit in importing that test into the legislative-prayer context.

Brett Harvey appeared on the Don Kroah Show to discuss Galloway v. Town of Greece. | MP3 audio 7:31 mins

David Cortman appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show to discuss Galloway v. Town of Greece.| MP3 audio 7:31 mins

KRQE (AP): The town is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based group that presses faith-based cases in courts nationwide. ADF senior counsel David Cortman said the framers of the Constitution prayed while drafting the Bill of Rights. “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” Cortman said.

NC Register: “It is perfectly constitutional to allow community members to ask for God’s blessing according to their conscience,” Brett Harvey, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, told Catholic News Agency on May 21. “A Supreme Court ruling reaffirming this historic tradition and making clear that prayer-givers are permitted to pray consistent with the dictates of their own conscience would both uphold the original understanding of the Constitution and provide needed clarity to put an end to these attacks on our American heritage.”

Patheos: Furthermore, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian non-profit organization based in Arizona where I live, appealed this case to the Supreme Court in briefs with support from 49 members of Congress and 18 state attorneys general.

Christian News Network: “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” stated ADF senior counsel David Cortman. “The Founders prayed while drafting our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court has ruled that public prayer is part of the ‘history and tradition of this country.’ America continues this cherished practice.”

Sacramento Bee: An atheist lawmaker’s decision to give the daily prayer at the Arizona House of Representatives triggered a do-over from a Christian lawmaker who said the previous day’s prayer didn’t pass muster.

Brett Harvey appeared on radio to discuss the case. | A Closer Look with Sheila Liaugminas at Relevant Radio – MP3 audio 13:48 mins | The Drew Mariani Show on Relevant Radio — MP3 audio 12:05 mins

Blog.Lawyers.com: The court could limit its ruling to legislative prayer, or it could broaden it to encompass governmental prayer in general. “It could invert the rule and the exception, and turn the general rule that government cannot endorse religion into a much narrower rule that the government cannot endorse religion in the public schools and that the government can do what it likes outside of the public schools,” says Lund.

FRC Washington Update: Given the long tradition of legislative prayer in America, there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic about the case. If our friends at ADF prevail, there’s a strong possibility that the Court will not only affirm public prayer but significantly strengthen the religious freedom rights of all Americans. In the meantime, I encourage you to pray–publicly!–that the Supreme Court sides with America’s First Freedom!

CBN: “A few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn’t like,” Harvey said. “Because the authors of the Constitution invoked God’s blessing on public proceedings, this tradition shouldn’t suddenly be deemed unconstitutional.”

USA Today: The Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom appealed and the high-court ruling, expected by June 2014, will resolve conflicting appeals-court rulings about religious expression. Tuesday’s invocation was to have been given by Serah Blain, executive director of the Secular Coalition of Arizona. But Mendez said House staff had no record of his request to allow Blain’s remarks, so he offered the remarks himself.

CNA/EWTN on DFW Catholic: “The founders prayed while drafting our constitution’s Bill of Rights,” he said. “America continues this cherished practice, and a few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn’t like.” Harvey said there have been 20 different federal lawsuits filed against local governments asking that they abandon their traditions of prayer. “A ruling against the Town of Greece would multiply the attacks on the historic practice of seeking divine guidance at public meetings and would suggest that the authors of the Bill of Rights were violating the Constitution, even as they were writing it,” he said.

Christian Examiner: “Americans certainly should have the same freedom as the Founders did,” Cortman told Baptist Press. “[Praying before government meetings] was a practice that was established over 200 years ago and certainly should be just as constitutional today.” The fact that most of the prayers offered were by Christians only reflected the town’s makeup, Cortman said. “The policy is open and neutral to anyone in the community,” Cortman said. “It’s merely a matter of the demographics of the community that make up the balance of prayers. What is a town to do? Engage in a religious Gerrymander and begin busing in people from all over the state and ask them, ‘What do you believe? What is your religion? How will you pray?’ That is the exact opposite of what the city should be doing. They should just open the forum and let the people in the community pray according to the dictates of their conscience. That’s what this town was doing.”
If the town begins monitoring the prayers and not allowing certain words, you have the “the local government controlling” the prayers — which itself would be unconstitutional, Cortman said.

Lyle Denniston at Constitution Daily: When the court agreed to hear the new prayer case from the city of Greece, New York, a community of about 100,000 people near Rochester, it stepped into a case in which a prayer practice at the opening of the town board meeting was struck down by a lower court using the endorsement theory. And, by granting review of that specific decision, the justices may well have been telegraphing a desire to second-guess the endorsement theory when prayers are recited at the outset of a public meeting of a government agency, with adults making up most of the audience.

Christian Post: “A few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn’t like,” Brett Harvey, a senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, said, according to USA Today. “Because the authors of the Constitution invoked God’s blessing on public proceedings, this tradition shouldn’t suddenly be deemed unconstitutional.”

Florida Today: Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based Christian nonprofit group, appealed the case to the Supreme Court. It is supported in separate briefs by 49 mostly Republican members of Congress and 18 state attorneys general.

Robert Barnes at the Washington Post: The religious legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom represented the town of Greece — a community of about 100,000 residents near Rochester — in challenging the appeals court decision. “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” senior counsel David Cortman said in a statement. “The Founders prayed while drafting our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court has ruled that public prayer is part of the ‘history and tradition of this country.’ ”

Business Insider: Thomas Hungar, representing Greece’s city hall with support from Alliance Defending Freedom, a social conservative group, said “legislative prayer” is deeply rooted in American history. “We hope the court will reaffirm the settled understanding that such prayers, offered without improper motive and in accordance with the conscience of the prayer-giver, are constitutional,” the lawyer said.

Stephen Prothero at CNN: That is unlikely to happen, since there is, as Alliance Defending Freedom has argued, an “unambiguous and unbroken history” of prayer in government bodies in the United States. But there is an equally long history of ensuring that these prayers are, as Americans United has observed, “inclusive and non-sectarian.” And those in Greece were neither.

Associated Baptist Press: David Cortman, senior counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the town, told the Post the framers of the Constitution prayed while drafting the Bill of Rights. “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” he said.

Salon: As reported by USA Today: . . . David Cortman, a lawyer for the town, said in a statement that prayer at council meetings is consistent with a longstanding tradition of prayer at government functions: “Americans today should be as free as the founders were to pray,” he said. “The founders prayed while drafting our Constitution’s Bill of Rights.”

JD Journal: The non-Christian town residents will be presented by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, while the town will be represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, whose senior counsel, David Cortman, claims the framers of the Constitution prayed during the drafting of the Bill of Rights, and, as the Washington Post reports, “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray.”

Democrat and Chronicle: Alliance Defending Freedom, the national religious defense group representing Greece pro bono, said the court “affirmed America’s long-standing practice of opening public meetings with prayer in 1983 and now has the opportunity to do so again.” It is supported in separate briefs by 49 mostly Republican members of Congress and 18 state attorneys general . . . “The practice of legislative prayer is firmly embedded in the history and traditions of this nation,” said Thomas Hungar of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, the attorney who filed the challenge. “We hope the court will reaffirm the settled understanding that such prayers, offered without improper motive and in accordance with the conscience of the prayer-giver, are constitutional.”

GOP USA: Recent legal attacks by people offended by such prayers have created significant confusion in the lower courts. “A few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn’t like,” said Brett Harvey, a senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom.

Religion News Service at Washington Post: Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based Christian nonprofit group, appealed the case to the Supreme Court. It is supported in separate briefs by 49 mostly Republican members of Congress and 18 state attorneys general.“A few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn’t like,” said the ADF’s senior counsel, Brett Harvey.

Christianity Today: The Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the town in the case, says a previous, 30-year-old ruling still stands, settling the matter.

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: ADF then asked Thomas Hungar of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, one of the most accomplished Supreme Court litigators in the nation—to become lead counsel on the case and join with ADF in asking the Supreme Court for review by filing a petition for certiorari. Today the Supreme Court granted that petition. ADF’s David Cortman says: Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray. The Founders prayed while drafting our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court has ruled that public prayer is part of the “history and tradition of this country.” American continues this cherished practice.