Praying for a moment of silence instead

I’ve covered many a government meeting in my time, from a session of the U.S. Senate all the way down to the city council. And all those meetings usually begin the same way: with a prayer.

Usually, that prayer includes an appeal for wisdom. And after all these years, I’ve hardly ever seen that prayer answered.

Are we to thus conclude God doesn’t exist? Or perhaps – much more likely – that he does exist, but disfavors politicians? Or that we’ve yet to find the right person to offer the right prayer to the right God?

Or perhaps it’s time to rethink the entire notion of public prayers at civil government meetings?

As the Review-Journal’s Kristi Jourdan noted in Monday’s newspaper, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled public prayers before government meetings don’t violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, so long as they are non-sectarian and multi-religious.  

At its core, public prayer cannot help but exclude some people from their stake in the government we all share, and in its administration of public affairs. A Christian prayer excludes Jews and Muslims, just as surely as a Muslim prayer excludes Jews, and on and on. And all of those prayers exclude atheists, agnostics and the adherents of other faiths.

How, for example, would a Jew be able to join in a prayer that ends with the popular tagline, "in Jesus’ name"? How could Christians – and by this I mean people who subscribe in all respects to the doctrine of faith outlined by the Nicene Creed – fully participate in a prayer led by someone who doesn’t subscribe to that creed? Our society has no consensus as to who is the One, True God, and if nothing else, we should be able to agree that we won’t solve that thorny issue before the city council or the Congress.

Of all people, Christians should be the last to fully embrace public prayer, although they’re usually the first. Although St. James reminds that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much, Jesus was quite specific about how to go about it:

"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 men," Jesus said, according to St. Matthew’s gospel. "I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 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."

Often, during a Catholic Mass, a prayer is offered for the president and others in civil authority. That’s perfectly appropriate.

But a session of the Senate or a meeting of the city council is not the place for it, even if some argue that the acknowledgement of God will bring blessing on the nation just as surely as the ignoring of God in public will bring condemnation. (According to the Psalmist, "blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.")

But isn’t it true that any divine favor America finds comes from the lives of the faithful, following the tenets of their religion, loving God and their neighbors as themselves? That has got to mean more than words spoken before lawmakers tending to the public’s business, especially when those words aren’t meaningful to all the people in attendance.

It’s long past time for Congress, the state Legislature and all local governments to consider replacing the invocation with a moment of silence, to let believers of all faiths pray as they wish, and to let non-believers alone. This avoids the sectarian, interfaith conflicts that must necessarily arise when citizens are asked to bow their heads as someone they consider a non-believer inveighs to a foreign god. But it also places prayer in its proper realm: the church, and private groups that gather like-minded believers for the purpose of exercising their First Amendment right to practice their religion.

To do otherwise continually invites idolatry, exclusion and cracks in the wall separating church and state, a wall that exists to protect both from the other. God will still hear the effectual fervent prayers of the righteous, and he just might grant all of us some wisdom as a result.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.