The Supreme Court, Civic Prayer and Chaplains
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court decided that the city council of Greece, New York does not violate the constitution by opening its meetings with prayers provided by local clergy, the majority of whom are Christian. The complainants had sought relief in the form of a requirement for "non-sectarian prayers." Howard Friedman at Religion Clause quotes Justice Kennedy writing for the majority. An insistence on nonsectarian or ecumenical prayer as a single, fixed standard is not consistent with the tradition of legislative prayer outlined in the Court's cases.... To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian would force the legislatures that sponsor prayers and the courts that are asked to decide these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech, a rule that would involve government in religious matters to a far greater degree than is the case under the town's current practice of neither editing or approving prayers in advance nor criticizing their co...