I pray that you respect our coverage of invocations
Few things set us off quite so much as the right to pray or not pray and when and where we can or can't do it.
So when a letter to the editor arrived this past week, decrying the practice of inviting a person of faith to do an invocation/prayer before each DuPage County Board meeting, it set off a flurry of activity by the fact-finding team of Davis, Sanchez & Smith.
The letter stated in part, "The permeation of the state by the church is evident in national politics, but it wasn't until I witnessed it at a local level that I realized it had seeped too far. We must end these religious practices in government affairs to keep that separation."
Even though it was our consensus this has been a regular and mostly unchallenged practice since the 1970s, we started researching the matter to see if this merited a news story.
It was DuPage Editor Bob Smith who first recalled the longevity of the practice and the fact that the county invites clergy of different faiths to keep things ecumenical. And Robert Sanchez, who covers DuPage County, noted the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the matter not long ago.
That 5-4 high court opinion seemed to support the county's practice - and that's certainly the way county board members and leaders in Wheaton, where a prayer kicks off city council meetings, interpreted the decision, which said prayers are OK as long as they do not denigrate non-Christians or try to win converts. Michael Gresk, mayor of Wheaton, a town with deep Christian roots, noted at the time of the 2014 ruling that the pre-meeting prayers often are led by Christians, though Jews, Muslims and Sikhs also have participated. Gresk said he always remarks, "If you care to join us, please do." He couldn't recall a time when someone in the audience left the room or remained seated during the prayer.
I'm not here to suggest that government-sanctioned prayer is a good or bad thing, proper or inappropriate, but that when the topic rears its head, we need to be around to chronicle it in as, dare I say it, agnostic a manner as possible.
For instance, especially after discovering the Supreme Court ruling, the "law firm" of Davis, Sanchez & Smith ruled this was not the time to pursue a story. (The letter, though, appeared on our website and in some Thursday editions, sparking a wholly spirited online debate.) What does tend to spur us to action is some sort of organized effort to change the status quo from a perceived intrusion of religion into government.
A recent example came when a Wisconsin-based outfit called the Freedom From Religion Foundation filed a complaint in late 2015 with Naperville Unit District 203 that coaches and players were praying together before Naperville Central High School football games. Many defended the practice, but the superintendent ordered a halt to the prayer meetings.
No one was more aware of the value of organized protest than the suburbs' best-known atheist, the late Robert I. Sherman, who was only too happy to tell the media of his many skirmishes with local government. His crusade started in 1986, when he successfully challenged Zion's right to display a Christian cross on its water tower, followed by a threat to sue Wauconda over its water tower crosses. Palatine and Rolling Meadows removed crosses from their municipal seals; Kane County covered up crosses when it bought a former seminary building. But Sherman lost a lawsuit challenging a state law requiring a moment of silence at the beginning of the school day.
Municipal debate about prayer continued in the early 2000s, including a recommendation by a then-alderman of starting Geneva City Council meetings with a prayer. He said, "I think we need to pay a lot more attention to God than government."
Today, the Geneva council does not open with a prayer.
But if you want a pretty good idea of how secular or nonsecular these invocations can be, go to the dailyherald.com version of this column and watch the attached videos from the Kane County Board and Batavia City Council. Two decidedly different approaches.
jdavis@dailyherald.com