Lodi, California is the latest to join the long list of towns engaged in the craze that's sweeping the nation: city council prayer angst. After a complaint followed one of their meeting's opening Christian prayer, the council wisely asked that subsequent invocations be non-sectarian while they consider an appropriate policy. So, you can imagine what happened next. That didn't sit well with members of the community that prefer their government-sponsored prayers to be Christian, and they let it be known on the first night of the new rules.
At the beginning of the meeting, people crowded into Carnegie Forum to listen to the invocation by the Rev. Alan Kimber of First United Methodist Church. He held a moment of silence before giving thanks for our country's freedom to express different beliefs.
At the end, he said "Amen," which was followed by some members of the crowd yelling "in Jesus' name."
Classy, eh?
In a Sacramento Bee editorial, Bruce Maiman powerfully argues that the council should stop officially praying.
[O]nce you enter the council chamber, you're not there to pray; you're there to govern by the consent of the governed, the people who elected you. And those constituents represent many different religious points of view or none at all. Any prayer in the name of anyone excludes members of the community, some of whom actually bothered to go to the polls on your behalf.
One protester said, "It's becoming harder and harder to be a Christian," and, "We're tired of our freedom being taken away." That's puzzling. How can you take away someone's freedom to be a Christian? That's a matter of conscience and personal belief. This issue isn't about separating faith from the person; it's about separating prayer from the job.
I don't know that I would put it quite that way, but the sentiment is right on. Why is this brand of controversy such a difficult one?
