Why is the Sand Springs, Oklahoma City Council Praying to Jesus Before Meetings?

To answer your headline: Because no one’s there after the meetings.

You’re right when you say they’re not bad people.  They really are good people.  They just need to be reminded occasionally that there are rules.  Thanks for posting.

Thanks for speaking up about this Beau! I live in Sand Springs. I had no idea this was going on.

Daniel, that is not how the Establishment Clause is decided. It isn’t restricted to Congress and laws. Are you familiar with the Lemon Test?

The government’s action must have a secular legislative purpose;
The government’s action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;
The government’s action must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion.

Those are the only three issues that matter.

Not familiar with the “lemon test.”

But it sounds pretty arbitrary. If those are the three issues that matter, I really think the establishment clause should be amended, because what is address is Congress and laws. It doesn’t say anything about city councils, presidents, judges, governors, or religious actions like prayer. The intention of the amendment was to prevent the establishment of a national church like the Church of England. If the intention was to prevent prayer at a city council, the founders could not have been less clear.

I was raised a Mormon in Columbus, GA and remember going to a City Council meeting one night in Boy Scouts.  There was some Christian Pastor asked to give the prayer the night we went.  I remember when it was over one of my scout masters turning to the other and saying “Bet they’d never have a Mormon Bishop do that.”

I think being raised in the LDS church, in a part of the country where there are few LDS members made me sort of hypersensitive to the importance of Church-State separation.  Mormons don’t do the Lord’s Prayer.  How would they feel if every school day started with the Lord’s Prayer?   As an atheist, my resolve against establishment has grown, for sure.

But what is so funny to me is how few Mormons seem to get that if they don’t stop establishment, as a minority religion, they are on the losing side.  The established religion, prayers said at schools, invocations of government bodies, etc etc will NEVER include their beliefs.  

What always annoyed me was that the religious always seem to be fine with any establishment, so long as what is established is their view.  Any establishment that differs from their view is a travesty!

Obviously, the truth is ANY establishment is a travesty…period.

Look at how the First Amendment has been interpreted throughout the 20th century. There are literally dozens of  court decisions that prohibit a lot more religious activity in public than just making laws. Most notably things like prayer and religious studies in schools.

Free exercise of religion was supposed to mean that people can worship whoever they want without being persecuted solely for that. It was never meant to be a license to whatever you want or harass other people. You can pray at home and in your church and no one will say anything about it.

Or how about you simply follow what Jesus said?

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for
they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners
to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward
in full.
But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your
Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in
secret, will reward you.” — Matthew 6:5-6

A city council prayer hardly counts as “harassment.”

Jesus is addressing prayer for show, not genuine public invocation, which he himself sometimes did.

No problem. Since you live in Sand Springs, it’d be even better if they heard from you as a citizen of that town and maybe some of your friends that live there.

As I currently live in Tulsa, I suppose my opinion holds less weight to them, even though I plan on moving there next year or so.

Prayer before government functions is nothing but show. Just slimy politicians trying to prove what good little Christians they are because they wouldn’t be elected otherwise.

If they want “genuine” prayer they can do so in a church

Daniel, no one is preventing the individual council members from praying. 

What the council can’t do, is endorse Christianity by having exclusively Christian prayers as part of the official meetings. The intent of the establishment clause is to keep the government from endorsing any religion. Since the 1860s, this applies to the states as well as to the federal government.

The key is what individuals can do, and what the government is allowed to do. An official prayer is action by the government, which is restricted.

I used to live on the other side of Tulsa from Sand Springs.  It’s scary out.  I very genuinely hope that the people challenging this don’t end up dead.

There is a right to pray in public, guaranteed by the same 1st Amendment that makes these prayers a no-no.  Every one of those council members may exercise his or her right to pray, but, in the case of a meeting already called to order, having an established prayer is an instance of government advancing a religion.

 It can be  intimidation if you aren’t Christian.

Although I haven’t done the research, I agree that there is probably legal precedent to no prayer in a public meeting. However, my personal belief is that it is not a big deal. I am an agnostic leaning towards atheist and a resident of ok for about 7 years. As a reporter sitting in on these meetings, I did not take part in the prayer but was not bothered by it. I find it mildly endearing as part of the cultural landscape of Oklahoma.

The First Amendment isn’t interpreted in a vacuum. You’re correct in that the Bill of Rights did not initially apply to the state. The Reconstruction Amendments, particularly the Fourteenth Amendment, changed that situation. By the late 1940s, it was clear that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated most of the Bill of Rights guarantees to the states, forbidding the states, and any geopolitical subdivisions thereof, from engaging in the behavior that the Bill of Rights forbade the federal government from conducting. The Establishment Clause was incorporated clearly in Everson v. Bd. of Educ., 330 U.S. 1 (1947), where Justice Black said that “[n]either a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither
can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one
religion over another. . . . Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly,
participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and
vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment
of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between
Church and State.'” Id. at 15-16.

Everson does little to establish any standards we can use to evaluade the Sand Springs, Oklahoma City Council’s actions. Other commentors suggest we use the Lemon test, but the Lemon test isn’t a very good test to use either. “Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly
sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed
and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause
jurisprudence once again . . . . Over the years, however, no fewer than
five of the currently sitting
Justices have, in their own opinions, personally driven pencils through
the creature’s heart (the author of today’s opinion repeatedly), and a
sixth has joined an opinion doing so.” Lamb’s Chapel v. Center
Moriches Union Free Sch. Dist., 508 U.S. 384, 398 (1993)
(Scalia, J., concurring). The Supreme Court uses
Lemon when they want to and ignore it when they
don’t. It’s not something we can depend on.

That, of course, doesn’t solve the problem here. Legislative prayer has a different standard, which comes from Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983). In Marsh, the Nebraska State Legislature paid a Presbyterian minister to open its sessions with a prayer. The Court, Burger, C.J., found that the practice was constitutional because of the long history of legislative prayer, dating from the First Continental Congress, and that the clergyman did not advance the beliefs of any particular church. Id. at 793-94.  The prayers were “nonsectarian,” and all elements of Christianity were removed. Id. at 793 n.14.

An extremely recent case in the Fourth Circuit (Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina) sheds some light on this issue. In Joyner v. Forsyth County, No. 10-1232 (July 29, 2011), the Fourth Circuit considered the invocations delivered before the Forsyth County Commissioners’ meetings. “[T]he prayers frequently contained references to Jesus Christ; indeed, at least half of the prayers offered between January 2006 and February 2007 contained concluding phrases such as ‘We pray this all in the name under whom is all authority, the Lord Jesus Christ,’ ‘[I]t’s in Jesus’ name that we pray[,] Amen,’ and ‘We thank You, we praise You, and we give
Your name glory, and we ask it all in Your Son Jesus’ name.'” Id., slip op. at 6-7. The Fourth Circuit recognized the difference between general Establishment Clause jurisprudence and legislative prayer jurisprudence. Id., slip op. at 10 (“At its core, this is not a case about the Establishment Clause in general, but about legislative prayer in particular. This distinction is critical, for legislative prayer lies at the heart of two intersecting realities.”).  The court decided that it can “approv[e] legislative prayer only when it is nonsectarian in both policy and practice.” Id., slip op. at 15. Because “[a]lmost four-fifths of the prayers contained . . . references” to “Jesus, Jesus Christ, Christ, or Savior,” the prayers were not nonsectarian in practice, and were thus unconstitutional, taken as a whole. Id., slip op. at 17. While this case is not binding on Oklahoma, which is in the Tenth Circuit, it is illuminative of typical legislative prayer jurisprudence. (The Fourth Circuit also made analogies to its two other major legislative prayer cases, Wynne v. Town of Great Falls, 376 F.3d 292 (4th Cir. 2004) (finding sectarian invocations delivered by council members on a rotating basis unconstitutional), and Simpson v. Chesterfield County Bd. of Supervisors, 404 F.3d 276 (4th Cir. 2005) (finding nonsectarian invocations delivered by local clergy constitutional).)

It is with this in mind that we should evaluate the actions of the Sand Springs City Council.

Finally, even if the U.S. Constitution did not forbid acts in support of religion, the Oklahoma Constitution would. See Okla. Const. art II, § 5 (“No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use,
benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system
of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest,
preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or
sectarian institution as such.”).

http://www.beaumcelhattan.com/reason/2011/07/30/meet-raymond-gene-phillips-a-deaf-homeless-man-in-tulsa/

Pardon my ignorance but could you direct me to the place in the Constitution that specifically states “separation of church and state”? I’ve always been under the impression that it states that the government may not establish by law a specific religion. I’ve reviewed and have yet to find a law in Sand Springs that establishes Christianity as the official religion. Please do not reply ignorantly with the word “inference” as I have never seen that word in our Constitution either. By your logic, if elected officials never use the word God, then it seems they would be establishing atheism as the official religion and that, of course, would be unconstitutional, in your opinion.

I asked where in the Constitution. Not an organization called freedom from religion or from a justice who feels that they were appointed to legislate from the bench. And again I’m looking for the words “separation of church and state” in the Constitution OR the law in Sand Springs that establishes a religion and requires its citizens to practice. Because the argument, and even the word used in the articles you directed me to, is establishment. But this situation in Sand Springs seems to tell only half the story omitting the part about establishment and that’s because establishment of religion doesn’t exist there or anywhere in America that I have found. Once more, my argument is that atheists would prefer that everyone practice atheism in public and by your argument that qualifies as establishing atheism as our official religion. Why not allow all to practice/worship publicly? Because that is the true definition of freedom OF religion as stated in the Constitution rather than freedom FROM religion which is not stated anywhere in our founding documents.

Just the kind of response I expected Parse.  I DID in fact do my research.  I was injecting sarcasm into my argument.  The fact is that the Constitution states that the Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof.   The Constitution is black and white.  In this case, the Congress has not made any laws doing either of these things.  So it seems that you are able to do a 5 minute google search in an attempt to make me appear uneducated but you have failed to understand the basis laid out by the Constitution of the United States.  Next please. 

@Apate1049
I’ll have to get back with you on this. I’m a bit occupied at the moment watching my grass grow.

Ah, conservative rage.  How predictable.  Ignore 225 years of jurisprudence and stare decisis; if it’s not in the black and white text of the constitution, it doesn’t matter. 

You claim to have done your research, but all you provide is assertions.  Could you provide
some documentation on how your (extremely limiting) interpretation of
the Constitution is the correct one?  Where by ‘the correct one’, I
mean that it’s the interpretation used by federal courts – you know,
the people who are responsible for interpreting the Constitution as it
applies to laws and situations. 

Because as it stands now, it’s your word versus that of eight contemporaneous Supreme Court justices, and you don’t need a J.D. to see which side makes a stronger case.  

The people in Sand Springs, Oklahoma ARE bad people.  I have lived here 35 years since I was a teen.  They are the most hateful people.  They are like Ernest T. Bass of Mayberry.  They are abusive and mean and a lot of militia people.  But, they pile into the cars and fill the churches every Sunday. 

Sand Springs people are mean, mean, mean.  And the Christians here are the most horrific people I had ever met in my young life.   There is a completely different level of a perverted Christianity in Oklahoma.  They do what they want, have low moral and ethical standards, but never shut up about their church attendance.  I am saving my money to get out of here. 

BTW, check out the city council and mayor’s page.  See how many of them fit religion in their descriptions.  One guy even puts the name of his evilgelical church under “Education.” 

Actually, most of them are really bad people.  I’ve been stuck here since I was a teen moved here by ignorant parents brainwashed by evilgelical family members.  Sand Springs is really a full on cult.  In September, someone was going door to door passing out KKK fliers here.  It is a horrible place.  I am a few years from paying off my house and I can’t wait to get out of here.  It isn’t just bad for people of other religions or no religion.  It is bad for nice people.  The people here are not normal.  That is why the population has not changed at all for decades.