Hawaii is the first state to abandon a requirement to open sessions with prayer although it does not prohibit them either. I would guess this would be politically unthinkable in most states. Yet it is sometimes constitutionally tricky how to comply with constitutional requirements for such prayers. Can such prayers persistently be within specific faith traditions? Can the prayers be within specific faith traditions if the legislature secures different religious leaders to pray within their faith traditions? Can any faith traditions be excluded on this model? If the decision is made to avoid specific faith traditions, is it easy for government to identify which prayers are sufficiently generic. Issues such as these are ably discussed by Charles Haynes, Senior Scholar at the First Amendment Center in an interview here. A sample: "[O]nce the government is involved, and the Supreme Court in this case has carved out an exception and allowed government prayers, we're always going to be fighting because it satisfies no one really. I mean, people of faith, deep conviction, are not happy with generic, to whom it may concern, prayers. Because for most religious people, those kinds of generic prayers are not real prayers. So it doesn't satisfy authentic religious faith for the government to be in a position of giving prayer as long as it's not real prayer.
"On the other side, people that don’t think their government should be involved in the religion business, they're not happy no matter how generic you make the prayer. You know, just because it's all watered down, and the least common denominator to whom it may concern, doesn't cure the problem for them that the government is in the business of promoting religion. So really this solution that the court carved out in Marsh, I don’t think satisfies anybody. So therefore, we're always going to be fighting, with one side wanting it to be a little bit more prayer and the other side, wanting it to be a little less prayer. So there’s no real good answer to that except meaningless prayers that, as I say, leave everybody feeling unsatisfied."
This post is another in a long line of posts, here and elsewhere, that confuse "faith" and "religion."
Religion includes such practices as infant circumcision, infant baptism, crucifixes hanging above your hospital room, "God bless America" and "In God We Trust" and moments of silence that persons with NO faith are regularly forced to undergo.
All such things would be prohibited in a country that respected individual human rights.
Posted by: Jimbino | 02/03/2011 at 07:26 AM