Written by Don Byrd
The Baptist Joint Committee yesterday filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the court to find unconstitutional official prayer at local government meetings. While the Supreme Court has previously found legislative prayer constitutional in the context of state legislatures, the BJC argues the dynamics of local government meetings are significantly different and should lead to a different outcome.
Here are some highlights from the brief:
Petitioner’s practice of beginning a participatory local government meeting with a prayer service violates the Establishment Clause because it improperly infuses the work of government with religion, and impermissibly compromises the rights of conscience of citizen participants. . . . [W]hen municipalities unite a town meeting with communal worship, the dissenting citizen is put on the horns of a dilemma: jeopardize access to the most accessible and participatory level of government, or compromise one’s conscience by joining insincerely in prayer. But this dilemma is not limited to non-Christians; many Christians believe, as amici do, that their freedom of conscience is violated when they are pressured to participate in government prayer, because such acts of worship should only be performed voluntarily.
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[L]ocal board meetings “differ fundamentally from state legislative bodies.” Unlike Congress and every state legislature, virtually all local governments hold “open meetings” in which citizens are invited to participate and comment on local issues. In fact, local government has been uniquely participatory since the Founding: de Tocqueville memorably observed that “[t]own meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach.” Local board meetings directly affect citizens in a way that legislative meetings do not.
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[W]hen such a meeting opens with prayer, the religious dissenter is in a far different position than a passive spectator in the anonymous setting of a visitor’s gallery. Since the meeting is participatory and communal, the prayer is not an internal matter among legislators representing distant constituents. In fact, in the Town of Greece, prayer-leaders turn their backs to the Board and face—and give instructions to—the participants. In this setting, participants who would dissent from petitioner’s worship service have no choice but to do so conspicuously. If they come to advocate for their beliefs and defend their personal interests, they must decide whether to risk showing disrespect to the Board members by refusing to participate in the communal prayer service the Board instituted. As a practical matter, citizens have “no real alternative which would . . . allow[] [them] to avoid the fact or appearance of participation.”
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Petitioner’s fundamental mistake is captured by its view of communal prayer as a “ceremonial acknowledgement[] of religion.” Holding aside the pressure it places on non-believers and religious minorities, to many Christians prayer cannot be reduced to mere “ceremony.” Rather, prayer is an act of communication with God that is profound, personal, and—crucially—voluntary. The Religion Clauses of the First Amendment respect the individual, voluntary nature of prayer by allowing each person to worship God as dictated by his or her own conscience, and by prohibiting the government from interfering with this right.
