“I didn’t know that ‘clergy’ were leading prayer in city council meetings? I was under the impression that it was lead by city council members and/or citizen attendees. I too would be bothered by members of a church clergy leading pray at a city council meeting as that would be the promotion of specific denomination.”

The commissioners court and city council meetings are archived online, and you can see there that clergy indeed lead some, if not most, of the prayers. Of course, that’s not the root of the problem as I see it, but thanks for showing at least a particle of restraint when it comes to shoving your faith-based concepts in the faces of the few who take the time to pay attention to what their “leaders” are doing.

Have you been living under a rock? We have recently learned that all their data was manipulated and/or fabricated, legitimate critics in the scientific community were silenced, and baseless stories of melting glaciers, rising sea levels, etc were nothing more than a hoax.

Sorry, friend, but the environmental movement, the warm-mongers, have been exposed. Denial of this is unhealthy for you and makes you seem even more like an extremist. To believe in man-made global warming NOW takes a blind leap of faith…does that terminology sound family?

Here’s something to read so you can catch up…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254660/Climategate-professor-Phil-Jones-admits-sending-pretty-awful-emails.html

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522575

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7046036.ece

http://www.examiner.com/x-37620-Conservative-Examiner~y2010m3d2-BreakingClimategate-researcher-says-hiding-facts-standard-procedure

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/al_latest_global_warming_whopper_TolFbG2ccT5XPtKtXoOx0L

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=207f77ef-802a-23ad-4b5b-0622bba3da4a&Issue_id=

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/theories_facts_and_denialism.html

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100029145/how-the-british-establishment-is-conspiring-to-prop-up-the-agw-myth/

“What harm is a simple prayer doing to you? So you don’t like hearing it. Get over it.”

Jesse,

If you were present at a function that involved an invocation that was not consistent with your faith, maybe even diametrically opposed to it, would you tolerate it in the same manner that you are expecting others to when it is prayers from your faith that are given?

Would it be acceptable to you for an authority figure, let alone a government official, to tell you to “get over it?”

I beg of you to treat others the way you would wish to be treated (and that applies to myself as well.)

Show others the same respect that you ask or demand for yourself.

As a non-Christian who has a faith, I feel very uncomfortable when in public venues where people of authority push their religious agenda. Even though the Constitution was designed to afford protection of belief systems unaffiliated with the mainstream, such protection has in reality been underwhelming.

Indeed, history shows that almost exclusively a “state” religion is used to control the masses, and to reward the select few who are often founders of a movement or have inherited the position in some manner. After all, a state religion promotes ‘the divinely inspired social order’.

What the leaders of many communities need to consider is that once their religious agendas have gone beyond a certain point, the people who feel threatened rather than served by their local governments will eventually defend themselves.

As for tolerating one religion’s prayer in a public governance venue, I don’t see the point. If I attempted to worship in public it would be maybe five minutes before a member of law enforcement was there to ask what I was doing, if I had a permit, if I was trespassing, and if I was aware of the people complaining. If this can happen in my own yard then so much for communing with divinty while wearing the family tartan.

Let government do the job it’s best at, screwing the public out of money to be squandered on lining the pockets of the rich. Let the religious factions meet on their own time as the government is costing me too much money as it is.

Fear them all! And yes, Bill, protect your pocketbooks!

“In decline,” really? Have they yet reached levels comparable to 20 years ago, or 100 years ago, or 500 years ago, or two thousand years ago? I would take the current Western cultural climate over those prevailing during any of the aforementioned time periods any day of the week. Women have won the right to not be raped by their husbands and can marry whom they wish, vote, own property, and choose whether or not to enter the workforce; the Abrahamic monotheistic/Pagan institutions of human slavery have finally been abolished in the West, and governments have, for the most part, granted people of color the same legal protections as whites; non-Christians now have equal protection under the law as Christians, etc. Funny that the more Western governments have ceased to endorse and enforce religion, the more that respect for human seems to have increased, so forgive me if I don’t shudder at the prospect of human societies becoming less religious.

“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” Denis Diderot

You have no obligation. Just sit there with a smile and wait for the prayer to end. It is you, sir, that are intolerant.

I am unable to find anywhere in my column where I said that all invocations (or prayers) at city council meetings violate the Constitution. There are circumstances when such prayers do violate the Constitution as understood and interpreted by the Supreme Court. I wrote mostly about sectarian prayers. Sectarian prayers do violate Marsh v. Chambers. The circumstances of Marsh are instructive.

In 1983, the Supreme Court carved out a narrow exception that permits, but does not require, some legislative prayer. In Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983), the Supreme Court ruled that the Nebraska legislature’s tradition of opening with a prayer by a paid chaplain was constitutional. A Nebraska State Senator challenged the practice as violative of the Establishment Clause. In theory, legislative prayer remains constitutional. Nonetheless, such prayers must abide by the strict constraints found in the Marsh decision, which carved out a very narrow exception to the Establishment Clause, as well as acknowledging that Court doctrine gives a nod to history and custom.

To be clear, however, the Court held that “Standing alone, historical patterns cannot justify contemporary violations of constitutional guarantees. . .” Marsh at 790. The Court determined that the circumstances found in the Nebraska Legislature’s invocation are a narrow exception to the prohibition against the government promoting religion or religious practice.

If a legislative prayer exceeds the confines of the circumstances outlined in Marsh, then no such exception would apply. First and foremost, the prayer opportunity must not be “exploited to proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other, faith or belief.” Marsh at 794. This applies to the content of the prayers, the selection of the prayer leaders, be they clergy, representatives, or government officials, and the audience to whom the prayer is addressed.

The audience in Marsh was construed as comprising only legislators, represented by the plaintiff, Sen. Ernie Chambers. The Court found that such an audience would not be “readily susceptible to ‘religious indoctrination.’” The Court found no “impermissible motive” in the appointment of the chaplain who led the prayers. Likewise, the Court found that, as the content of the prayers was both nonsectarian and non-denominational, although in the Judeo-Christian tradition, no attempt was being made to either proselytize or advance any one faith or belief, or to disparage any other. The Court took note that the chaplain had, in fact, previously determined to remove all references to Jesus Christ in his prayers. Ultimately, the Court dismissed the idea that legislative prayer poses any real, inherent threat to the Establishment Clause, barring circumstances other than those stipulated in Marsh.

Also, I did not think that my scripture selection was a rhetorical tool. I intended it as a substantive condemnation of those who violate the admonition of Jesus. I say again that no one has attempted to explain how one can reconcile the admonition of Jesus about public prayer with what most of these Christian ministers are doing each meeting before the San Marcos City Council. I even consulted about it with a Christian religious scholar who is a friend of mine before finishing the column.

Prayers at the beginning of council meetings do not run afoul of the Constitution. You cite one passage of an opinion from a district court in North Carolina, but largely ignore the holding of the United States Supreme Court in Marsh v. Chambers. The majority opinion held, “In light of the unambiguous and unbroken history of more than 200 years, there can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society. To invoke Divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the laws is not, in these circumstances, an “establishment” of religion or a step toward establishment; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country.” To my knowledge, the Supreme Court has not backed off this core holding in the subsequent 30 years.

As to your theological argument, I am glad you are reading, but I do not think you should cite scripture as a rhetorical tool to backstop your poor legal argument.

Regarding education, it is freely available to those who desire it sufficiently. Of course, not all educational institutions provide equal quality, such that one’s options depend in part upon one’s motivation, and in part upon one’s willingness to engage in independent thought.

Best Regards,

John Ross

My question is – if O’Dell is so concerned about free speech and an objective press – why does the Hays County Roundup blog (where O’Dell writes so much of his conspiracy theories) let the authors decide whether or not a comment to their opinion piece is posted or not? If an author doesn’t like the comment, it doesn’t get posted. What kind of free speech is that? Doesn’t the Roundup and its associated newspapers in Kyle and Wimberley represent a tightening over local media controlled by the odellian new world order?

Why is it that atheist are the most intolerant people? What harm is a simple prayer doing to you? So you don’t like hearing it. Get over it. There are far more important things to deal with. And there are far more dangerous issues facing us.

The funny thing about all this is that education has been in decline and social ills have been on the rise since religion has taken out of the public discussion.