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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, |
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.
The Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors opens its meetings with a prayer by Supervisor Emmitt Marshall, the senior member of the board.
In Caroline County, the board chairman usually leads the prayer, and Stafford County supervisors, like members of the City Council, rotate offering the prayer among themselves.
In King George County, the board chairman usually asks a fellow supervisor or county employee to lead the invocation.
Opening invocations also don't have to take the form of prayers.
For example, in the city, some council members have opened meetings by quoting Abraham Lincoln.
At another time, the Serenity Prayer used by Alcoholics Anonymous was recited.
But O'Neil cautions that while praying to a specific deity at the start of a public meeting is not unconstitutional, it is fraught with problems.
"There may be circumstances under which it might be deemed coercive to other members of the council or public," he said. "And if one evening the public schools invited kids to observe the city council, it might be suspect."
"It's also offensive not only to non-Judeo-Christians but to Judeo-Christians who don't believe prayer has a role in a public place like that."
