I know this is preaching to the choir, but I am so sick of incidents of bringing the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause up when it does not apply. Constitutionally, “establish” means exclusively to support with government money, and that’s all it means. An elected public official has no less right to religious belief, or lack of it, than the ordinary citizen. There is noting unconstitutional about a panel of public officials praying before a public meeting, whether the prayers are Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Wiccan, or Satanic. If public officials want to stay in office, however, they would do better to keep their devotions private and the meetings shorter.

whether it is explicitly a Christian prayer.

Yes.

I don’t like the lawsuit but it is what it is—a Christian prayer.

I was born in Sussex County. Except for the beach resort towns on the Atlantic shore it is generally rural and conservative. I didn’t kmow the Councilors began with the Lord’s Prayer but I am glad they do.

When will the courts and the Congress wake up and recognize that by siding with the atheists that they are merely making Atheism the official religion of the US?

Hmm. Maybe they already know that, and that’s why they’re doing it.

I’m afraid you all might have brought me a difficult
case because there is no reference to Jesus or Allah . . .

U.S. District Judge Leonard P. Stark
Commenting in re Mullin v. Sussex County

One cannot tell what’s indecent and what isn’t . . .

U.S. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Commenting in re Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations

The courts cannot on the one hand claim the competency to discern what is and is not Christian speech while on the other claiming their incompetency to determine what is and is not indecent speech.

I think it was a different court.  Moreover, the issue is not competence, but function.  We are still awaiting a decision in theFCC case so it may be that the Court will enunciate a standard or, at least, an approach. 

But, on the subject of the Lord’s Prayer, I think we might almost all agree that it is a particularly Christian prayer, being a prayer that Christ taught us directly.  However, if one studies its content, there is no reason that a Jew or even, perhaps, a Muslim, would find any reason to dissent from its substance. 

If a county councilman were to stand up and recite the Prayer in a meeting, he would be exercising his First Amendment right of free speech.  No court would act against that.  If they all do it in unison as a predicate to doing secular business, it probably is a different story.

The Lord’s Prayer is firmly rooted in the Abrahamic tradition.  Another prominent example: the 23rd Psalm

The Lord’s Prayer is also deeply rooted in the twelve step meeting tradition, which operates independently of theology per se. That it calls to a Higher Power has proved sufficient theology to bind and heal a community not attached to a specific religion.