Wilmington, USA – A hearing Wednesday in a lawsuit aimed at stopping the Sussex County Council from reciting the Lord's Prayer before each meeting delved into the theological meaning and history of the prayer's title and whether it is explicitly a Christian prayer.
Four county residents want U.S. District Court Judge Leonard P. Stark to rule that council's recitation of the Lord's Prayer violates the establishment cause of the First Amendment, which prohibits government from favoring one religion over others. They have asked the judge to rule the practice unconstitutional and order the council to cease reciting any sectarian prayers.
"It affiliates the county government with one single faith — Christianity — and sends a message to the county residents that their county government favors one religion," said Alex Luchenitser, an attorney for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C., watchdog group that has taken on the case for the plaintiffs.
The county has asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit.
The five-member Sussex County Council has been reciting the Lord's Prayer at the start of public meetings for 41 years, under Democratic and Republican majorities, county attorney J. Scott Shannon said.
At the start of each Tuesday morning meeting, Council President Mike Vincent stands up and nods to his four colleagues, signaling them to bow their heads and begin to recite the Lord's Prayer.
The county's attorney contends the council's recital of the Lord's Prayer is permissible under the U.S. Supreme Court's 1983 ruling in Marsh v. Chambers, which found in a Nebraska case that having a government-funded chaplain say a prayer before a legislative session was constitutional.
"Legislation invocations are not religious practice," Shannon said.
Shannon argued the prayer is generic and that Vincent, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, is not proselytizing or asking the audience to join in.
Citizens attending meetings who are non-Christians can easily recognize the prayer commonly associated with Christianity and found in the Bible's New Testament, Luchenitser said.
If a citizen does not join everyone else in attendance by standing to recite the prayer or leaves the chambers, they may be "outed as nonbelievers" and treated differently by their neighbors or the council, Luchenitser said.
"The way this prayer is recited has many hallmarks of a religious exercise," Luchenitser said.
Shannon said the language of the Lord's Prayer is tolerable and contains language that fits with widely held beliefs of people of other faiths.
"It is not required that a prayer be inoffensive to all or that it be all-inclusive," Shannon argued.
In trying to determine whether the practice is constitutional, Stark asked several questions of both attorneys about the content of the Lord's Prayer, which begins with the words "Our Father" but does not make specific reference to Jesus Christ or the Lord.
"Is there any dispute that today, only Christians say the Lord's Prayer?" Stark asked Shannon.
Shannon acknowledged the prayer is commonly associated with Christianity, but argued the prayer derived from a Jew — Jesus Christ — as detailed in the Gospel of Matthew.
"(Jesus) was not offering a Christian prayer in the Christian tradition because no Christian tradition existed," Shannon said.
The words "Our Father" are an implicit reference to Jesus, Luchenitser said, meaning the prayer is Christian.
"That's a Christian way of referring to Jesus," Luchenitser said. "This is not something reasonable people disagree over."
Stark acknowledged the lawsuit brings "weighty issues" before his court. He set no timetable for ruling on the case. "I'm afraid you all might have brought me a difficult case because there is no reference to Jesus or Allah" in the prayer, Stark said.