Invocations at Council Meetins

I haven’t been to city council meetings in many cities but the ones I have gone to or scene usually open up with a religious invocation. I never really questioned it. In my mind I always thought that such a practice was reasonably OK so long as different religions were offered the opportunity to perform the invocations.

This is why I was a little surprised to read in the Los Angeles Times that the City of Lancaster, CA was being sued over prayer invocation at city council. Its not like residents don’t want it. In fact they voted to make it official city policy last month and passed it overwhelmingly according to the article.The suit was filed by an attorney representing to unrelated women, one is a Christian and the other is Jewish. The article doesn’t really say why only to point out that the plaintiffs feel it violates the 1st amendment.

In Casa Grande, to the best of my recollection, invocations are performed at all council meetings. Sometimes when there isn’t a religious group is at the meeting the council will ask someone in the audience or even a staff member, usually a department director, to perform the invocation. It seems to have always been customary. While I don’t see a problem with invocations at council meetings I think one solutions I to simply have a moment of silence and let people do what they chose. They can pray or chose not to.