The Rev. Hashmel Turner greets church member Raymond Lomax last night at the First Baptist Church of Love. Turner, a councilman, will resume praying at Fredericksburg City Council meetings, even though the ACLU has said such prayer is unconstitutional. rdt Visit the Photo Place

Turner to pray again at council meetings

Councilman Hashmel Turner will resume prayer.

By ELIZABETH PEZZULLO

Date published: 10/9/2003

His decision challenges ACLU's position

Fredericksburg City Councilman Hashmel Turner will resume opening council meetings with prayer, specifically invoking the name of Jesus Christ.

His decision places him at odds with the American Civil Liberties Union, which earlier said such an invocation was unconstitutional.

"I have the right to pray just as any of the councilmen," said Turner, associate minister with the First Baptist Church of Love in Sylvania Heights. "I'm not promoting any particular religious conviction other than my own and I'm not trying to persuade anyone else."

According to a First Amendment scholar, Turner is within his rights to do so.

"That's something you cannot regulate," said Robert O'Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression at the University of Virginia.

"If a legislative body elects a chaplain, and the chaplain is most commonly from a Christian denomination, he may offer an explicitly Christian invocation. I don't think there's any constitutional objections."

O'Neil added that the same applies to lay members.

Turner offered such prayers until he received tersely worded letters from the ACLU last year and again this summer after a resident complained about his mention of Christ at meetings.

The letters said Turner was in violation of a landmark 1983 Supreme Court decision prohibiting sectarian worship during public meetings.

As a result, Turner stopped giving the invocation and had his name removed from an informal prayer rotation among council members.

But after consulting with the Charlottesville-based Rutherford Institute, Turner said nothing prevents him from praying as he sees fit.

In fact, the institute--which often takes up cases of religious freedom--sent a letter to the City Council on Sept. 15 informing members of its legal opinion.

"I write to expressthat Mr. Turner should be permitted to continue to pray in the name of Jesus Christ, just as other Council members should be permitted to pray as they see fit," wrote Rita M. Dunaway, special counsel to the institute. "Any distinction be-tween sectarian and non-sectarian legislative prayers is invalid."

Kent Willis, the ACLU's Virginia director who wrote the letters to Turner, could not be reached for comment.

Opening public meetings with prayer is not unusual.

It happens in the U.S. Congress and the Virginia General Assembly, as well as in local government bodies.

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Date published: 10/9/2003