A Connecticut school board has reportedly removed prayers before board meetings following a complaint from a “concerned community member” and an atheist organization.
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The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), an atheist activist group, contacted the Enfield school district to complain about prayers allegedly routinely taking place before meetings, CT Insider reported.
The Enfield school board reportedly discontinued the practice of prayer earlier this year.
The FFRF published an August 31 statement claiming the organization had succeeded in having prayer “removed” from board meetings, calling board members’ practice of invoking God at such gatherings “offensive.”
“The Enfield Public Schools system has removed the offensive practice of opening its board meetings with a prayer after the Freedom From Religion Foundation objected,” the statement opens.
The FFRF announcement then shared one of the prayers allegedly said by board member Jean Acree. It read:
Heavenly Father, we ask that you bless us with your presence at this meeting tonight. Bless all who are present. Please, Lord, open the hearts and minds of this board as we listen to our presenters and our audience in attendance so that we can make wise decisions on issues that are of great concern to us. I also pray for the best for all our children in Enfield. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
A lawyer from the FFRF who wrote the letter calling for a halt to the prayers, he claimed it was “beyond the scope of a public school board” to include invocations in its meetings.
Beyond that, the atheist activist group argued that the inclusion of prayer put nonbelievers in a difficult and potentially uncomfortable situation.
“It is coercive, embarrassing and intimidating for non-religious citizens to be forced to publicly demonstrate their non-belief (by not standing or praying) or to show deference to a religious sentiment in which they do not believe , but that their school board members make it clear,” the statement continued.
According to the FFRF, the neighborhood has now replaced the time when an invocation or minute of silence is held with a simple minute of silence. The board reportedly voted unanimously in the spring to remove opening prayers and consolidate a moment of silence, CT Insider reported.
THE decision left the FFRF “happy” and content.
A 1997 article in the Hartford Courant note the district voted 6-3 that year to introduce prayer or a moment of silence before meetings.
“We wrote this in a way that should not offend anyone except perhaps an agnostic,” said Ann Maloney, then chair of the board. said. “It’s our heritage, our culture. Well, we step up to defend the culture of everyone else in the country, but everyone jumps on us when we try to express our own culture. It is very simple. We are not talking about theology. We talk about respect for each other.
This practice was abandoned before resuming in 1997.
While the FFRF said in his letter “calling students, parents and others attending board meetings to pray is unconstitutional” The situation may be more complex than the complaint explains.
Government meetings regularly begin with prayer at the local and federal levels. It is the genuine involvement of students and individual prayers that are factored into the legal aspects, although invocations are historically considered part of the fabric of American governance.
For example, U.S. Senate Chaplain Barry Black, a retired rear admiral who has served as the 62nd U.S. Senate chaplain since 2003, told CBN’s Faithwire that the congressional chaplaincy was first established in 1789, and that the tradition has continued since then.
“At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, they reached an impasse. Benjamin Franklin stood up and said“Sir, I am a very old man, but I have lived long enough to know that if a sparrow cannot fall without God knowing it, then a republic cannot rise without his help,” Black recounted, noting that Franklin suggested prayers be invoked. “One of the first acts of the new legislative power in 1789… was to create a chaplaincy. It actually predates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
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The hearing by the Supreme Court of City of Greece v. Galloway That 2014 case resolved some issues surrounding prayer at government meetings, with the justices siding with the New York City of Greece.
The city has been sued for invocations given before public meetings. But the Supreme Court held that the prayers were constitutionalprovided that people of all faiths are invited to participate.
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