WASHINGTON — After the marshal spoke the traditional “God save the United States and this honorable court,” the Supreme Court ruled that the upstate New York town of Greece does not violate the First Amendment’s prohibition of “establishment of religion” by opening its board of supervisors’ meetings with a prayer. This ruling would not scandalize James Madison and other members of the First Congress, which drafted and sent to the states for ratification the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights. The Congress did this after hiring a chaplain.
Three decades have passed since the court last ruled on the matter of prayers during government meetings. In 1983, the court held: “The opening of sessions of legislative and other deliberative public bodies with prayer is deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country. From colonial times through the founding of the Republic and ever since, the practice of legislative prayer has coexisted with the principles of disestablishment and religious freedom.”
Since then, however, many Americans have become more irritable and litigious, and less neighborly. Also, there are many more nonbelievers. And the court has made Establishment Clause jurisprudence more labyrinthine with nuances such as the “endorsement test”: What government behavior touching religion would a reasonable observer see as endorsing — or disapproving — a particular religion or religiosity generally?
Until 1999, Greece’s board usually opened its meetings with a moment of silence. Since then, it has invited local clergy, most of whom are Christians, to deliver prayers, most of which have had Christian content. The court has never held that legislative prayer must be nonsectarian. But the two plaintiffs against Greece argued that the predominance of Christian voices (there were others — Jewish, Baha’i and a Wiccan priestess who prayed to Athena and Apollo, rather fitting for a town named Greece) constituted establishment of Christianity as the town’s religion. A lower court agreed.