Imagine you are an entrepreneur in Greece, a town of 96,000 in upstate New York, wanting to open a restaurant inside a billiard parlour. Before you pitch the idea at a public hearing, hoping to win a special-use permit, a Catholic priest delivers a prayer, a tradition in Greece since 1999. Suppose you’re not a believer. Do you bow your head with everyone else? Glare? Walk out?
In Town of Greece v Galloway, the Supreme Court is considering whether Greece’s brand of public prayer violates the constitution’s ban on the establishment of religion. It is 30 years since, in Marsh v Chambers, the court upheld the Nebraska legislature’s right to a chaplaincy. If religious invocations in legislative bodies were acceptable to the men who drafted the first amendment, the court reasoned in Marsh, they are all right now.
[blockquote] Citizens attending such meetings may worry, for example, that they may not get their potholes mended unless they pray with everyone else. [/blockquote]
Prayer? Christianity? Talk sense and ask a question that goes to power: Does being a Republican in the Town of Greece get the street in front of your house mended?
I can attest that it does not.
The opening prayers are not only by Catholic priests, but by a variety of David, including Wiccan.
Faiths, not david.