Several Southern California cities are in a quandary over the invocation of God’s name at city council meetings, setting up a battle over First Amendment rights.
The city of Lake Elsinore, in Riverside County, faces the threat of a lawsuit over its decision to eliminate mention of “religious figures” such as Jesus Christ from the traditional opening prayer at its council meetings.
The city says the invokers can make a general reference to a supreme being, but local pastors have viewed the council’s decision as censorship and consequently are unwilling to accept any invitation to give an invocation.
The nonprofit United States Justice Foundation, which is threatening the suit, insists that the city has been deceived by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Last fall, ACLU attorney Peter Aliasberg wrote a letter to Lake Elsinore warning that the city could face legal troubles if it did not quit using the name of Jesus Christ in its invocations.
The city complied, but its decree apparently had the effect of eliminating the prayer altogether. According to the minutes of its Oct. 22 meeting, “In the absence of the Invoker, there was a moment of silence” to begin the council’s public session that evening.
The most recent meeting, on Tuesday, also began with a moment of silence, according to the minutes.
In a letter to the Lake Elsinore council Tuesday, USJF litigation counsel Richard Ackerman said, “It has come to our unfortunate attention that you have recently caved into the demands of the American Civil Liberties Union by removing all vestiges of prayer from City Hall.”
The USJF is giving Lake Elsinore 30 days to respond.
The ACLU contends that praying at the request of a government entity is a violation of the First Amendment’s prohibition against the establishment of religion. In contrast, Ackerman, citing numerous Supreme Court decisions, maintains that telling a pastor what to pray is a violation of his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religion.
The ACLU’s letter to the council is “extortion, in my opinion,” Ackerman told WND, “and unfortunately it’s working.”
‘Wall of separation’
Ackerman told the council it has been “misled by the American Civil Liberties Union into believing that there is a solid wall of separation between you and the public that you serve. In our considered opinion, the ACLU is extorting you into violating the rights of your citizens.”
The USJF attorney said the notion of “separation of church and state” is derived from the dissenting opinion of the 1946 Supreme Court case Everson vs. Board of Education, which upheld a program allowing parents to be repaid from state funds for the costs of transportation to private religious schools. The court required only that the state maintain neutrality in its relations with various groups of religious believers, he argued.
“The decision in Everson does not rise to the level of being a battle cry for those who would wish to remove every vestige of religion from the public forum,” Ackerman wrote. “Here, if the City of Lake Elsinore wants to allow invocations at City Hall, it need only make sure that everyone is allowed an opportunity to have a chance to offer an invocation.”
Ackerman said that “on the offhand chance a Wiccan or Pagan wishes to offer an invocation, then, admittedly, you must allow them to do so.”
“There is nothing unconstitutional about being all-inclusive when it comes to public prayer and allowing a free marketplace of citizen ideas,” he said. “Self-expression, through a citizen invocation, simply reflects what most citizens in Lake Elsinore already believe.”
The ACLU’s Aliasberg, however, insists that a person who prays at the invitation of a government body is representing the government. When that person names a specific deity, the government is taking sides, he contends.
“When you pray to Jesus Christ, you say that’s God, that’s our savior, and are basically excluding other faiths,” Aliasberg said in a Riverside Press-Enterprise story last October. “The establishment clause of the Constitution forbids excluding any religion.”
‘Some qualms’
The Press-Enterprise said the case was brought into focus last year by the controversial Jewish Defense League Chairman Irv Rubin, who has since died. Rubin sued the City of Burbank concerning an invocation at a city council meeting that ended with an expression of gratitude and love, “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
The trial court favored Rubin, the Riverside paper said, by ruling that sectarian prayer that excludes other religious beliefs at a government meeting is unconstitutional. The decision was upheld in September by the state’s 2nd Appellate District court, and Burbank’s attorneys are seeking to have the case considered by the California Supreme Court.
The Riverside County city of Temecula also is undergoing a similar battle.
A Lutheran pastor was the first to be confronted by Lake Elsinore’s policy, the Press-Enterprise said. Chuck Aden of Shepherd of Life Lutheran Church said that for public invocations he usually strives to be inclusive in his prayers and not use the name of Jesus, reasoning that, “Even though more than 90 percent of people believe in God, I don’t believe that 90 percent of people are Christian.”
When he arrived to give the invocation on Oct. 8, he had already written an inclusive prayer. But when he was pulled aside by Lake Elsinore’s attorney and asked to avoid specifying the divine by name, he said, “I did feel some qualms,” the Press-Enterprise reported.
“I felt like, ‘I don’t think you can tell me what I can say.'” he said. “And I wasn’t about to hand over what I had written for approval.”
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