Minister on council told he may not open meetings with Christian invocation
Fredericksburg City Council last night voted to comply with a request from the ACLU of Virginia asking that prayers which open its meetings be non-sectarian.
The official decision comes more than two years after a Fredericksburg resident complained that Rev. Hashmel Turner, an elected member of council, was delivering a Christian prayer at the beginning of council meetings.
Turner stopped participating in the prayer ceremony after the ACLU threatened to file a lawsuit, but asked fellow members of Council to adopt a policy permitting sectarian prayers.
“Fredericksburg City Council made the right decision,” said ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Kent Willis. “Not only are they in compliance with court rulings on government prayer, but people of all faiths will now feel welcome at city council meetings in Fredericksburg.”
“The Supreme Court allows government meetings to be opened with a prayer,” said Willis, “but it has been clear for many years that these prayers must be broad, inclusive invocations of faith that unify rather than divide on the basis of religion,” added Willis.
“The ACLU would be the first organization in line to defend Rev. Turner’s right to espouse his Christian beliefs in church, in any public forum, and even during official city council deliberations,” said Willis. “But when an elected official opens a government meeting with a prayer, that official is speaking for the government, and the government is not allowed to express a preference for one religion over another.”
Fredericksburg City Council, like many local governing bodies in Virginia, opens its meetings with a prayer delivered by a member of Council. The responsibility for delivering the prayer changes each meeting, rotating through the list of participating council members. Of the four members of council who choose to participate, only Rev. Turner was delivering a sectarian prayer.
In the early 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its first decision on prayers at government meetings, finding that the Nebraska legislature could open with a prayer without violating the separation of church and state. In that case, Marsh v. Chambers, the high court noted that Nebraska’s legislative prayers were non-sectarian and implied -- but did not explicitly say -- that sectarian prayers would be impermissible. Several years later, in Allegheny v. ACLU, the Supreme Court added clarity to Marsh by banning expression that may “have the effect of affiliating the government with any one specific faith or belief,” and noting that the prayers involved in the Marsh case were allowed only because the chaplain had “removed all references to Christ.”
In 2004, in Wynne v. Town of Great Falls, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals followed the line of reasoning connecting Marsh and Allegheny, and held that the Town Council of Great Falls, South Carolina, could not open its meetings with a Christian prayer. Great Falls asked the Supreme Court to overturn the Fourth Cirucuit's decision, but it refused to hear the case.
Contact: Kent Willis, Executive Director, ACLU of Virginia, 804-644-8022
