Are Public and Legislative Prayers Permissible?
Two school boards in Arkansas were told to stop opening their meetings with prayer. Of course, the advice came, not from their attorneys or the community the boards represent, but from a secularist group that just doesn’t like prayer in public. Learn what the Supreme Court and lower courts have to say about public and legislative prayers at FirstLiberty.org/Briefing.
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Two school boards in Arkansas were told to stop opening their meetings with prayer.
Of course, the advice came, not from their attorneys or the community the boards represent, but from a secularist group that just doesn’t like prayer in public.
We have covered the issue of legislative prayer often on the First Liberty Briefing. By now you know that public and legislative prayer has not only been a long-standing part of our country’s history and tradition; it has at least twice been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. And, earlier in 2017 the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit gave its approval to school boards opening meetings with prayer.
Perhaps these school boards in Arkansas should consider the words of Chief Justice Burger writing for the majority in the 1983 case of Marsh v. Chambers:
“It can hardly be thought that in the same week Members of the First Congress voted to appoint and to pay a chaplain for each House and also voted to approve the draft of the First Amendment for submission to the states, they intended the Establishment Clause of the Amendment to forbid what they had just declared acceptable.”
County commissions, city councils, and school boards across America: don’t be afraid to pray like the Members of the First Congress.
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