REGION — It’s possible that the Town of Deer Park is the only municipality in the Upper Delaware Valley that opens its meetings with an invocation or prayer, but as far as the majority opinion of the United State Supreme Court is concerned, the council is free to continue the practice and it does not violate the country’s constitutional separation of church and state.

The decision was handed down on May 5, in a case involving the Town of Greece, NY, which has been starting meetings for most of the past 10 years with a prayer delivered by mostly by local Christian clergy.

The court’s majority opinion essentially said that as long as the prayers don’t criticize or belittle other religions then there is no harm in starting an official town meeting with a prayer. The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, said, “The inclusion of a brief, ceremonial prayer as part of a larger exercise in civic recognition suggests that its purpose and effect are to acknowledge religious leaders and the institutions they represent, rather than to exclude or coerce nonbelievers.”

On the other side of the issue writing for the minority, Justice Elena Kagan said, “I respectfully dissent from the court’s opinion because I think the Town of Greece’s prayer practices violate that norm of religious equality—the breathtakingly generous constitutional idea that our public institutions belong no less to the Buddhist or Hindu than to the Methodist or Episcopalian.”

In the opinion of the American Civil Liberties Union of New York, the decision was “disheartening,” but came with some good news because the prayers may not “denigrate non-believers or religious minorities, threaten damnation, or preach conversion.”

From the ACLU press release regarding “two areas of blindness” in the majority opinion:

“First, the court’s opinion focuses heavily on prayers delivered in Congress and state legislatures, but it fails to recognize that an intimate meeting of a town board or county council is much different. Ordinary citizens regularly attend these meetings for a variety of reasons—e.g., to keep abreast of local affairs, to seek zoning permits, and to receive awards. In the town of Greece, they were confronted directly and repeatedly with official, Christian prayers and called on to join in those prayers.

“Second, the court dismisses the content of the prayers as ‘ceremonial’ in nature, notes Kagan, disregarding the fact that Greece’s predominantly Christian invocations profess ‘profound belief and deep meaning, subscribed to by many, denied by some.’”

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) supported the decision. Jay Sekulow, chief counsel, said, “This is a sound decision that recognizes the significance of our nation’s heritage and tradition. This important victory underscores what many have argued from the beginning: the prayer in this case is constitutionally protected speech.”

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) did not agree. “Today’s Supreme Court decision is regrettable in not insisting that those prayers be required to reflect our nation’s religious diversity,” said AJC General Counsel Marc Stern.

Stern noted that the dissent, “had it right when they said that the town’s opening prayer practice, which favored the town’s Christian majority, failed to comply with the ‘remarkable guarantee’ embodied in the Constitution.

“‘When the citizens of this country approach their government, they do so only as Americans, not as members of one faith or another,’” wrote Justice Elena Kagan. ‘They should not confront government-sponsored worship that divides them along religious lines.’”