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njlauren -> RE: You can now violate someone else's religion with prayer! (7/20/2014 9:20:22 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Arturas
quote:
The only way such a prayer could be legal is as the OP said, if we allowed prayers from other groups as well, the first amendment says that the government cannot favor any one religion over another, and prayers to God or especially Jesus as not generic, there is no such thing. A generic prayer, one that would encompass all faiths would not be very good, and unless at each meeting we allowed people to say their own prayers, there can be no such thing.
We do. I am free to say any prayer I wish in this setting. If a Hindu comes to a meeting with his prayer wheel it is allowed.
You are playing fast and loose with the facts, as many of the religious right do, where they complain that their right to pray is being limited. In the case of the town council, if a member wants to say a prayer, to make themselves feel better, that is fine, that is themselves doing it as an individual, and that is protected. The problem is when an official body of the state organizes and official prayer, as the town council did here, or when schools have invocations and so forth. This is a government body organizing prayer, having a minister or other clergy do the actual prayer, and that is the problem because that is a government body sanctioning prayer, which is a no no. A member saying a prayer, or a couple of members spontaneously saying a prayer, is fine, because the body itself doesn't sanction it. Like I said in my other post, unless the town council had someone from every faith group giving a prayer, they are de facto giving precedence to the religious group whose prayer was said, and that is a violation of the 1st amendment proscription against official prayer, establishing a religion. On top of everything else, this is exactly what the founders fought against, the prayer that is said will more than likely represent the majority religion in the area, and when it came to religious rights the founders did not want it to be majority rules, they knew outright that was coercion because they had both seen it, with the way the Anglican church often oppressed other religious groups, and with the example of what the Catholic Church did in Europe, and they didn't want it.
If someone is offended by someone else doing a prayer for themselves, they are a jerk; someone offended because a government body decides to pray, as a body, someone offended is expressing outrage at others forcing their beliefs on them. Once a government body is involved, it is no longer about individual rights, it is a government body expressly saying "this prayer is done by us, it represents our beliefs", which makes that body give the impression of being exclusatory to other groups and potentially hostile to people based on religious belief.
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