We’ve heard all sorts of stories about city council meetings that begin with a Christian prayer.
Finally, one mayor has put a stop to them!
Announcing the decision in a secularist group’s monthly newsletter, Mr [Colin] Hall said prayers were ‘outdated, unnecessary and intrusive’ and added they would no longer be said before meetings…
Wow… that’s awesome.
What’s the catch? There has to be a catch.
There’s a catch.
Writing in the Leicester Secularist Society’s publication, the mayor said: ‘I am delighted to confirm that I will be exercising my discretion as lord mayor to abolish this outdated, unnecessary and intrusive practice.
‘I consider that religion, in whatever shape or form, has no role to play at all in the conduct of council business.
‘This particularly applies in Leicester, where the majority of council members, myself included, do not regularly attend any particular faith service.’
The best part about this has to be the reaction from the UK’s Christian Right:
Mike Judge, spokesman for the Christian Institute, said the mayor was ‘imposing his own views on the rest of the council’.
He continued: ‘The reading of Christian prayers before meetings symbolises our Christian heritage and offends nobody.’
The mayor was imposing his own views by removing the prayers entirely.
You have to wonder what Judge would say if Mayor Hall had substituted the Christian prayer for one that said, “We don’t believe in a god.” That would be imposing his views. But he’s not doing that at all. If any Christians want to privately pray before a council meeting, they have that option.
Being forced to say Christian prayers is offensive to people who are not Christians. How is that not obvious?
How come America has so few mayors with enough courage to stand up against these kinds of prayers?
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