Pro-Family Attorney: State Should Avoid Dictating Public Prayers
by Jim Brown
March 7, 2005
(AgapePress) - A school board in southwest Florida is considering eliminating pre-meeting prayers after an invited clergywoman prayed in Jesus' name. The Lee County School Board in Fort Myers, Florida, is acting in response to a prayer delivered by a Pentecostal pastor, who concluded her invocation with "in Jesus name we pray." Board members have cited concerns about the prayer and its apparent endorsement of a particular religion, which might be construed as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution.
But Steve Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, says the school board must be careful not to dictate religious practice, an action that would involve its own constitutional problems. He says, "When you start fashioning, as a government body, guidelines for what an outsider -- in this case a pastor who's invited in -- can and cannot say in his prayer, you raise the danger of another prong of the so-called 'Lemon Test,' namely excessive entanglement."
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Steve Crampton |
The high court's prohibition against "excessive entanglement," Crampton explains, is based on the same principle behind what many have come to know as the separation of church and state. "The Supreme Court has held that, where a government body becomes excessively entangled with matters of religion, then it's also in violation of the Establishment Clause," he says.The AFA Law Center attorney contends that government entities and their officials are ill-suited to be crafting matters of theology. In cases like that of the Lee County, Florida, school district, he recommends that the board allow its pre-meeting prayer to be offered on a voluntary basis by members of the community -- but he admits even that plan is not without its drawbacks.
"The danger here is, you might have a Wiccan or someone from a Muslim background come in to offer prayer," Crampton says. "Frankly, in a pluralistic society, we may have to live through that." Still, the pro-family attorney suspects that the overwhelming majority of citizens in the largely conservative Lee County are Christians. Therefore he predicts if the school board there asks community members to offer prayers on a rotating, voluntary basis, "Ninety-five percent of the time you're going to get good, Christian prayers -- and then you won't have the problem of the government telling you what you can and cannot say."
Currently the Lee County School Board requires that prayers offered at its meetings be non-sectarian and exclude references to biblical scripture and requests for divine assistance or affirmation.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a news reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
