December 7, 2007
Pa. Capitol Prayers Come Under Scrutiny
by Mary Warner
Religion News Service
HARRISBURG, Pa. Twenty-four years after the U.S. Supreme Court gave its blessing to America's long tradition of opening government meetings with prayer, questions linger about just what kind of prayer is OK.
Those questions now hover over the Pennsylvania Senate, which has opened every session with prayer for years.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State complained last month that prayers in the Senate often use language only a Christian would use. They end, for example, "in Jesus' name."
The Washington-based group asked to stop the prayers "in order to make all feel equally welcome at sessions of the Senate." If prayers continue, they must use no language specific to one religion.
Senate officials countered that their "interfaith opening prayer" has been offered not only by Christian clergy, but by rabbis, a Unitarian pastor and, recently, a Buddhist teacher.
The Senate doesn't prescribe what belongs in the prayers and what doesn't, said Drew Crompton, counsel to Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati.
"The question becomes a broader interpretation of interfaith," Crompton said. "You balance one prayer against the others."
The dispute highlights continuing unease around civic prayer in a society still mostly Christian but aware of increasingly visible minority groups, not only Jews, Unitarians and Buddhists but Muslims, Hindus, Bahais and Sikhs.
In addition, a growing number of Americans -- about 15 percent, by some polls -- profess no religion.
In 1983, the Supreme Court upheld prayer before government meetings, calling the practice "deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country."
Michael Broyde at Emory University's Center for the Study of Law and Religion said there's no constitutional problem with praying in Jesus' name in the Senate as long as non-Christians pray there, too.
"I think all prayers are sectarian. There's no difference under the Constitution among prayers," Broyde said. What's important in a government setting is that "you're free not to participate and there's a variety of options."
A prayer policy like the Senate's is "probably a pretty safe way to go," said Charles Haynes of the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to the First Amendment. "But there's no question people will challenge it.
Related Headlines
