Editorial: Motion to Stop the Invocations
November 13th, 2007
There are a lot of surprising things about City Council stated meetings. The crumbling ceiling overhead is odd. The rote recitation of agenda items to be coupled on the general order and referred to various committees certainly strike any newcomer as a strange way to spend 15 minutes of Speaker Christine Quinn’s and the Council’s time. And scheduling ceremonials so that they always make the meetings run late seems like a practice begging for some rethinking.
But little about them is more bizarre and inappropriate than starting each stated meeting with an invocation.
Sure, having the local priest or rabbi or minister or imam stand in front of the Council and offer some words of blessing is a nice way for Council members to spotlight another aspect of their communities. Sure, the prayers are, as a group, anything but sectarian and have been led by enough representatives from enough branches of every major organized religion to stave off any substantive accusations of discrimination. And sure, the Council is far from alone among government groups in including prayer, and the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion need not mean freedom from religion.
Still, these are stated meetings of the New York City Council between government employees held during government time on government property. Every aspect of the meetings is paid for with taxpayer money, so to devote part of them to religious activities at least raises some questions about the appropriate separation of church and state.
Maybe the Council needs to reflect on the wisdom of Alexander Hamilton, arguably the greatest New York political figure in our city and state’s history.
Back in 1787, at the Constitutional Convention, he refuted the proposal floated by famed deist Benjamin Franklin that the stalemate they faced in their deliberations over the structure of the new republic might be broken by instituting a morning prayer.
Doing so would be dangerous, Hamilton argued, since the public might then be led to believe that those at the convention were incapable of handling the problems themselves. And since they were creating a government by and for the people without a formal role for god or any representative of god, this could be particularly problematic.
They also, apparently, did not have the funds to pay for a preacher to lend his services—or at least thought that money could be better spent elsewhere. In both this and the substance of Hamilton’s objections, it seems the Council could learn a lesson sent down through the centuries.
But little about them is more bizarre and inappropriate than starting each stated meeting with an invocation.
Sure, having the local priest or rabbi or minister or imam stand in front of the Council and offer some words of blessing is a nice way for Council members to spotlight another aspect of their communities. Sure, the prayers are, as a group, anything but sectarian and have been led by enough representatives from enough branches of every major organized religion to stave off any substantive accusations of discrimination. And sure, the Council is far from alone among government groups in including prayer, and the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion need not mean freedom from religion.
Still, these are stated meetings of the New York City Council between government employees held during government time on government property. Every aspect of the meetings is paid for with taxpayer money, so to devote part of them to religious activities at least raises some questions about the appropriate separation of church and state.
Maybe the Council needs to reflect on the wisdom of Alexander Hamilton, arguably the greatest New York political figure in our city and state’s history.
Back in 1787, at the Constitutional Convention, he refuted the proposal floated by famed deist Benjamin Franklin that the stalemate they faced in their deliberations over the structure of the new republic might be broken by instituting a morning prayer.
Doing so would be dangerous, Hamilton argued, since the public might then be led to believe that those at the convention were incapable of handling the problems themselves. And since they were creating a government by and for the people without a formal role for god or any representative of god, this could be particularly problematic.
They also, apparently, did not have the funds to pay for a preacher to lend his services—or at least thought that money could be better spent elsewhere. In both this and the substance of Hamilton’s objections, it seems the Council could learn a lesson sent down through the centuries.
