Indianapolis, USA - A federal judge's order that the Indiana legislature stop using the name Jesus Christ in its 188- year practice of holding an opening prayer has sparked protests from residents, politicians and clergy.
Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma says he is exploring an appeal or other ways to get around the ruling, while an Indianapolis Star newspaper editorial criticized the decision as ``terribly intolerant.''
Some pastors are refusing to lead invocation prayers to a ``generic'' God in the legislature, where lawmakers moved to amend the Indiana constitution this year to prohibit same-sex marriage and may debate next year whether schools must teach ``intelligent design'' as an alternative theory to evolution.
``The forces that want to take religious faith out of our government and our society are nibbling away at our liberty,'' Bosma, a Republican, says of the Nov. 30 ruling by U.S. District Judge David Hamilton in Indianapolis. ``They got a big bite with this one. We have done nothing different here than what's happened for 188 years.''
Hamilton ordered Bosma as speaker to instruct leaders of the invocation prayer to use non-sectarian words and refrain from using Christ's name, title or other denominational appeal.
The Indianapolis Star's Dec. 2 editorial said, ``Hamilton was terribly intolerant of those Christians who believe that their faith instructs them to pray in the name of Jesus Christ.'' Republican Governor Mitch Daniels said of the ruling: ``It's regrettable.''
The criticism crosses party lines. House Minority Leader Patrick Bauer, 61, a Democrat from South Bend who preceded Bosma as speaker, says he would support an appeal.
`Made Me Angry'
June Adams, 80, a retiree from Williamsburg, 75 miles (121 kilometers) east of the state capital of Indianapolis, was one of 13 people quoted in the city of Richmond's Palladium-Item newspaper ``Sound Off'' column Dec. 5 on the topic. Twelve of the 13, including Adams, opposed the ruling.
``I don't think Jesus should be taken out of the prayers,'' Adams said in an interview. ``Our government was founded on freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. It made me angry because Indiana's been considered a pretty conservative state.''
Indiana, the 14th-most-populous U.S. state, with 6.24 million residents, has voted Republican in every presidential election starting in 1968.
About 82 percent of the state identifies itself as Christian and less than 1 percent as Jewish or Muslim, an Indiana University poll in 2004 showed. Nationwide, 80 percent of U.S. adults identify themselves as Christian, with about 1.7 percent saying they are Jewish, and 0.5 percent Muslim, a study by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found. Chicago borders Indiana on the northwest.
`Talk With Jesus'
The Indiana Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit May 31 on behalf of four state residents. The group's legal director, Kenneth Falk, says the lawsuit stemmed from Clarence Brown, a Baptist church elder, singing ``Just a Little Talk with Jesus'' after his invocation in the state legislature April 5.
As Brown sang, legislators and staff clapped and sang, while several people left, offended by what they considered a sectarian religious display, Hamilton's ruling states. Hamilton based his ruling partly on the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, which prohibits making laws on the establishment or prohibition of religion.
Hamilton ruled that opening prayers, given by volunteers who are often ministers, constitute government speech because the House speaker grants access.
Endorsement
During 2005, Christian clergy led 41 of the 53 prayers that opened House sessions, and 29 of the 45 prayers with transcripts referred to Jesus, Savior or Son, court documents show.
``The actual practice amounts on the whole to a clear endorsement of Christianity,'' Hamilton's ruling states. He concludes: ``A majority who sees its faith as true and benign can be tempted in a democratic republic to try to use the power and prestige of government to advance that faith in ways that would actually divide and exclude.''
The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives open their sessions with prayers by staff chaplains. The Supreme Court says such prayers are constitutional, so long as they don't advocate one belief or disparage others.
Religious displays in government buildings are a divisive U.S. issue. In 2003, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from office by a state ethics panel for defying a federal court order to move a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building rotunda.
Objections
John Pless, a professor at Concordia Theological Seminary, a Lutheran college in Fort Wayne, says he would refuse to lead prayers in Indiana that don't mention Jesus. ``I call it a generic prayer,'' he says.
House Speaker Bosma, 48, who was raised Lutheran and now belongs to an evangelical church near Indianapolis, has until Dec. 30 to appeal.
Falk, of the civil liberties union, says mail he's received hasn't always followed the Christian tenet of ``love thy neighbor.''
``The hate mail is that this is anti-Christian,'' Falk says. ``And of course it's not, it's against any sectarian prayer. It's the religion cases that always provoke the most responses.''