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Colorado Local Commissions Debate Invocation Policies

By Howard M. Friedman

Yesterday's Grand Junction (CO) Daily Sentinel reports that Grand Junction, Colorado City Council will consider a resolution at their meeting tomorrow under which the city clerk will randomly select spiritual leaders from local congregations to offer an invocation "according to the dictates of his/her own conscience." However, the person delivering the prayer will be asked that the invocation "not be exploited to proselytize a particular religious tenet or belief or aggressively advocate a specific religious creed or derogate another religious faith or to disparage any other faith of belief." Also the agenda for the meeting will state that the invocation is intended to "solemnize" the meeting, not to establish a particular religion, and will indicate that attendees may sit, stand or leave the room during the prayer. A local group, Western Colorado Atheists and Free Thinkers, has asked Council to eliminate the invocation and replace it with a moment of silence.

Meanwhile yesterday's Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports that a Mesa County Commissioner (the county in which Grand Junction is located) is taking a different view. Under a policy adopted in 2005, one of the three Commissioners opens the County Commission meeting with a prayer which those in attendance are told they may join if they wish. Commissioner Janet Rowland yesterday ended her prayer "in the name of Jesus". Challenged at the meeting by a local resident, Rowland, who is in the midst of a primary contest for Republican nomination for a Commission seat, said: "I don't mind losing the election, but I do mind losing my faith or my belief in the Constitution."

Full post as published by Religion Clause on August 05, 2008 (boomark / email).