You can Pray - Just Don't say "Jesus.." (My title)

The Porterville Recorder ^ | 2-28-05 | Roger Phelps

[cakid]

4 options on deity issue to be weighed

By Roger Phelps, The Porterville Recorder

A weighty decision on public prayer faces the Porterville City Council Tuesday. Wrestling with the sentiments of hundreds of demonstrators calling in recent weeks for resumption of official prayers naming Jesus Christ, the council could choose among four optional actions described in a report by the city attorney.

One is to keep things the way they are, whereby Porterville invocations observe a court ruling that mentioning a specific deity in official prayer violates the establishment-of-religion clause of the U.S. Constitution. The case is Rubin v. City of Burbank.

In addition on Tuesday, a petition probably will be entered into the council record. Circulating for two weeks, it calls for the City Council to change Porterville's current practice around invocations and permit invoking a specific deity. Currently, invocations refer more generally to divine powers being called on, using terms such as "God" or "Lord."

Authors of the petition prefer to couch the question not as a religious issue but instead as a matter of guarantees to free speech under the Constitution - because, they say, pastors' rights to say "Jesus" are being abridged. However, many speeches on the issue at recent council meetings have drawn choruses of "Amen."

Options before the council will be the following:

moment of silence, replacing an invocational prayer;

invocations in conformity with Rubin v. Burbank- the current practice;

a "free-prayer period," also replacing an invocation and noted on agendas but held before the council roll call establishing a quorum; and

a resolution that Rubin v. Burbank "violate(s) the free-speech and free-exercise (of religion) clauses of the First Amendment, and...that such ruling should not be controlling with regard to the city of Porterville."

City Manager John Longley said the text of the fourth optional resolution was written by members of the same group that authored the petition.

In evaluating the fourth alternative, City Attorney Julia Lew wrote, "The city attorney cannot recommend this particular option."

This story was published in The Porterville Recorder on February 28, 2005

[cakid]

Big crowd on hand - the city council is dealing with this tonight...

[msnimje]

Can you pray to "Heyzeuz?"

[goldstategop]

Its a point Justice Moore raises in his new book: can public officials believe in God without running afoul of the Constitution? Of course they can! Unless you subscribe to the ACLU-AUSH's separationist world view in which God has no place in the public square.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)