Great Falls, USA - Jesus no longer has a place in prayers that open Town Council meetings here.
The long-standing practice in this old mill town, about 35 miles north of Columbia, was struck down last year in response to a lawsuit filed by a follower of Wicca, a pagan religion characterized by witchcraft and attention to earthly seasons. A federal judge -- and then a federal appeals court -- found the Town Council's prayers invoking Christ's name unconstitutional on grounds they advanced one religion over others.
"I don't like it one bit," Councilman J.C. Broom, a retired furniture salesman who usually gives the invocations, said last week of the court rulings.
Two weeks ago, the Georgia American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit similar to the one against Great Falls that seeks to halt Christian prayers before Cobb County Commission meetings. The suit's outcome may set a legal precedent that Georgia governments must follow.
The case again has stirred discussion over the dividing line between church and state.
"Government-mandated prayers were traditionally the most egregious features of religious establishments, and have thus always been viewed suspiciously as first steps on the slippery slope toward new religious establishments," said John Witte Jr., director of Emory University's Center for the Study of Law and Religion.
The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed all manner of religious texts, symbols and ceremonies to stand in public squares so long as parties are not coerced to support or participate in them, he noted.
"But overtly sectarian legislative prayers -- particularly if they are consistently of a certain denominational accent or offered by the same person or small group of persons -- cannot pass constitutional muster," Witte said. "Legislatures that maintain an open microphone and allow all manner of religious and nonreligious speakers to offer opening words before their legislative sessions are less constitutionally vulnerable."
Cobb officials insist their invocations -- which often conclude with some variation of "in Christ's name we pray" -- are constitutional. Commission Chairman Sam Olens, who is Jewish, typically begins a meeting by telling the attendees that if they wish, they may rise for the prayer and Pledge of Allegiance.
Olens said Cobb's prayers were constitutionally permissible because religious leaders of all faiths were welcome. "It's totally random, and no elected official has any part in the process of who's chosen to give the invocation," he said. "We have four rabbis in the county, and all four have given an invocation in the past year. We have one mosque, and it has been represented at least twice in the past year. All the various forms of Christianity regularly come before us."
Cobb's case is just one of a number of such challenges percolating in the federal court system nationwide. This summer, four plaintiffs represented by the Indiana Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the speaker of the state House of Representatives for allowing legislative sessions to begin with prayers that endorse Christianity.
The Indiana House's policy is similar to the one used in Georgia: The House and Senate each invite a "chaplain of the day" to give an invocation to start a business day.