Better in their words…

God hangs on by a vote at the Supreme Court.
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May 5, 2014 7:13 p.m. ET

The Supreme Court did a good turn for religious freedom on Monday, ruling that prayer is permitted at government meetings and doesn’t amount to an endorsement of religion. The disconcerting surprise is that the decision was only 5-4.

Greece v. Galloway dealt with a challenge to the town of Greece, New York’s practice of opening its council meetings with a prayer. This being America in the Year of Our Lord 2014, two women sued, claiming to be offended because the clergy invited to read an invocation were predominantly Christian. The High Court ruled that such a legislative prayer is part of American tradition going back to the Founders and doesn’t favor one religion over another.

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Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot on the Supreme Court’s ruling that Christian prayers before public meetings do not violate the Constitution. Photo: Getty Images

The High Court had upheld legislative prayer as recently as 1983 in Marsh v. Chambers, so this case was really about whether the Justices were going to restrict that precedent and further limit God in the public square. That’s precisely what the four liberal Justices would have done, led by Elena Kagan, who argued in her dissent that even allowing a rabbi or cleric to make a sectarian reference is divisive and constitutes a state endorsement of that religion. Joined by the three other liberals, she said any prayer must be generic and entirely nonsectarian.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy carefully explained the long history of legislative prayer. “That the First Congress provided for the appointment of chaplains only days after approving language for the First Amendment demonstrates that the Framers considered legislative prayer a benign acknowledgment of religion’s role in society,” he wrote.

The town of Greece used mostly Christian prayers because its citizens are predominantly Christian. Yet when rabbis and clerics of other faiths asked to give the prayer, they were welcome. Even a Wiccan priestess was allowed to issue what we suppose was an anti-prayer. Council members and visitors were under no obligation to pray along and there was no evidence of punishment or even disapproval for anyone who didn’t.

Justice Kennedy added that demanding with Justice Kagan that the town allow only a generic prayer would require that town leaders get in the business of scrubbing the text in advance. Politicians would have to become judges of what is tolerable public religious expression.

“The First Amendment is not a majority rule, and government may not seek to define permissible categories of religious speech,” wrote Justice Kennedy. “Once it invites prayer into the public sphere, government must permit a prayer giver to address his or her own God or gods as conscience dictates, unfettered by what an administrator or judge considers to be nonsectarian.”

While the decision is welcome, the close vote shows that public prayer hangs by a single vote at the High Court. The liberal Justices were more than happy to modify a precedent to further restrict even the most passing public reference to a sectarian God. Religion is in no danger of imposing itself on Americans, but a dominant secular legal culture is still working hard to push religion to the sidelines of American public life.

via Prayer in the Public Square – WSJ.com.