pecunium

A while back there was a case wherein a woman requested to be put on the list of people eligible to lead a, "non--sectarian," invocation for the business sessions of her county's Board of Supervisors.

She is a Wiccan, and she was denied, on the basis that she wasn't going to give one with a Judeo-Christian motif, and that was what they wanted.

She had a lawyer write some letters, and then filed suit, claiming the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment was being violated by the preference given to Judeo-Christian religions (the county sends out a letter to the area congregations asking if they have someone who might give such an invocation. They've had rabbis and imams, as well as priests and preachers. One gave a bi-lingual invocation in Spanish and English).

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back down, with an order to dismiss Simpson v Chesterfield Board of Supervisors.pdf.

The Court did decide she had standing, which the County had alleged she didn't because the Board decided she was ineligible, because she didn't belong to a Judeo-Christian faith and 2: said she had not been denied the right to address the Board, nor to practice her religion. The County also argued that she did not have standing because she would not, had they granted her request; and then asked her to lead such an invocation, have invoke a deity, but rather have given a more generically inspirational speech.

So that's a mark of reason on the Court's part.

What the 4th Circuit seems to be holding (and they spent 4 pages arguing that they were in keeping with Marsh v. Chambers 463 US 783, 793(1983), so there seems to be some sensitivity on that bench in response to claims they were trying, in other recent decisions, to step away from Marsh and chart a new path) because the prayers don't proselytise, and are made before adults, who are believed to be of strong mind and so not subject to peer pressure; which is why schools aren't allowed to have invocations, but meetings of legislative bodies are.

What I find confusing is the finding, on pages 10-11, that it would be illegal if the invocations themselves actually proposed to find one religion better than all others. To my mind the denial of any faith which fails to meet a test of orthodoxy(in this case being part of the Jewish/Christian/Islamic family of faiths... they have Mormons on the list after all, and there are a whole lot of mainline churchs which think them not merely strange, but actually tools of the anti-christ) is a preference.

In fact, to my mind, the rules of the Board of Supervisors (which require that the Deity not be invoked by name; no appeals to Jesus allowed) makes the exclusion of any specific faith seem more predjudicial. It doesn't matter that one is speaking of a generic godliness, it matters rather that one is not speaking of the right generic godliness.

Given that the Chesterfield Board says the invocation is only to bless/inspire/help the Board, one might be able to argue that, absent members of non-Christian faiths they could limit the invocational speakers to members of denominations represented (or, in a spirit of ecumenism, to the major stripes reflected) and that absent any Wiccans they were in bounds.

But they are also absent Jews and Muslims, so on its face I would say that safe harbor escapes them.

I keep re-reading the decision, and it keeps looking, to me, as though the arguments the Court makes to justify its conclusions, prove the other side's case.

The oddity of the argument the Court chose, that the holdings of the Supreme Court in Marsh allowed a town to keep, as an employee, a minister of a single faith for 16 years would, if Simpson (the plaintiff in this case) prevailed, because to avoid such cases in the future legislative bodies would all be forced to hire a sectarian minister.

The worst part of this decision seems to be on page 17, "We cannot adopt a view of the tradition of legislative prayer that chops up American citizens on public occaisions into representatives of one sect and one sect only, whether Cristian, Jewish or Wiccan. In private observances, the faithful surely choose to express the unique aspects of their creeds. But in their civic faith, Americans have reached more broadly. Our civic faith seeks guidance that is not the property of any sect. To ban all manifestations of this faith would needlessly transform and devitalize the very nature of our culture. When we gather as Americans, we do not abandon all expressions of religious faith. Instead our expressions invoke common and inclusive themes and forswear, as Chesterfield has done, the forbidding character of sectarian invocations.

So, in order to make certain we keep a non-sectarian nation, we have to let the Government decide which faiths are allowed to speak in public.

The only part of the decision which makes sense, to me, is the concurrence of Judge Neimeyer, holding the difference (not made in the decision itself) between this case, and others, is that the Board is not engaging in prayer for anyone other than the members of the Board (which is how he says this case differs from Wynne v Town of Great Falls 376 F.3d 292 (4th Cir. 2004), and that, as such, they may choose anyone they desire to so lead them.

But I don't find that argument in the actual decision.