Creighton Bricker’s June 18 letter to the editor exposes a curious anomaly in our constitutional system. The U.S. Supreme Court has no authority to tell our Congress not to pray or how, even though it is the court’s exclusive function to say what the law is. Such is not true as to the Grand Junction City Council.

Because Congress and the judiciary are co-equal branches of government, the separation-of-powers doctrine prevents the Supreme Court from interfering with the operation of Congress. Thus, even though sectarian prayers by congressional chaplains are just as unconstitutional as similar invocations before City Council meetings, only Congress can police itself. In an election year, there is little likelihood that a member will complain.

Please also recall that congressional sessions involve no public participation (in contrast to City Council or county commissioner meetings). Thus, technically, the invocations are exclusively for the benefit of the members, not the public. No such invocations are typically offered at committee and/or subcommittee hearings at which testimony is to be taken (even though witnesses may swear or affirm to tell the truth).

While the First Amendment commands that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…,” our Supreme Court acknowledged in the Marsh case that the historical practice of “legislative prayer” conducted by an official chaplain constitutes an allowable exception to the general rule against affiliating the government with religion.

In other words, even though Congress itself doesn’t practice what the Supreme Court preaches, the Establishment Clause nevertheless applies to all subordinate governmental entities — including the Grand Junction City Council — and permits only nonsectarian references to a “ceremonial deity,” or else no invocations at all.

Bill Hugenberg
Grand Junction

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 11:19 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.