If Osceola County commissioners don’t change the way they conduct invocations at the start of their regular meetings, they could face a lawsuit over the practice, according to County Attorney Jo Thacker.

At a commission retreat Feb. 12, Thacker told commissioners that she had received notification that “people are watching what we are doing” in terms of the kind of prayers being offered at the start of twice-a-month commission meetings and who is offering them.

The group, according to Thacker, is the Madison, Wis.-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, which would prefer commissioners not offer any invocation. The group sent a letter to the county in November with its concerns.

After complaints from the Washington, D.C.-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State in 2007 about the lack of diversity in the invocation, the county in June 2008 agreed to rotate the person offering the prayers and the religion represented and to have a county employee keep track of who was invited and who responded. However, that rotation and diversity has fallen short, according to Thacker, with the Christian religion represented most of the time.

“You have to mix it up and not have the same religion week after week,” Thacker cautioned commissioners. “If you don’t mix it up, you are going to get into legal trouble.”

Thacker also told commissioners that the courts have said prayer is permissible as long as all religions have the same opportunity to participate and that they do so.

Commissioners responded that county staff has “reached out” to a variety of non-Christian religious leaders in the community inviting them to participate in commission meetings but that most have chosen not to come. Commissioners also said they believed that as long as they document that they are trying for diversity, then they are protected legally.

“Us showing that we are reaching out isn’t enough,” Thacker said. “The court would look at what really happened.”

Thacker advised commissioners that they have several options if they want to continue the invocations:

• Offer a generic prayer or an all-inclusive one if someone from the Jewish faith, for example, doesn’t show up at a meeting after agreeing to do so. There should be no references to a specific religion, such as praying to Jesus Christ, for example.

• Make sure that there is variety in terms of who is giving the invocation and the religion represented.

Commissioner Ken Smith said he doesn’t want to get the county into a legal battle but also doesn’t think that having an invocation is a violation of anyone’s right or a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

“I’m drawing the line in the sand,” Smith said. “We compromised the last time and went to the current system. I’m not going to compromise any further.”

Smith said the practice of praying before government meetings goes back centuries, and that the founding fathers of the United States even hired a chaplain to lead their invocations, a practice that continues today at the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

County Chairman Fred Hawkins Jr. said having an invocation is the view of the “silent majority” and that he would be willing to “go to court” on the issue.

Commissioner Michael Harford said he has “no problem” with prayer at the start of meetings.
Commissioner Brandon Arrington suggested setting time aside for a silent prayer instead of an invocation.

In the end, commissioners agreed to keep the invocation but to increase efforts to reach out to all the religious community for people to lead the invocations.

According to the Freedom From Religion Foundation Web site, the group works to educate the public on matters relating to non-theism, and to promote the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, even filing lawsuits where appropriate.

Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor in her Nov. 20 letter to the County Commission wrote that the foundation had been contacted by “residents and taxpayers” of the county who “strenuously oppose” the prayers at meetings and that the prayers are “rarely, if ever, nonsectarian.”

Gaylor goes on to state that government prayer is “unnecessary, inappropriate and divisive.”

“Calling upon members and citizens to rise and pray (even silently) is coercive, embarrassing and beyond the scope of secular county government,” wrote Gaylor. “Members of the board are free to pray privately or to worship on their own time in their own way. They do not need to worship on taxpayers’ time.

“Observing a strict separation of church and state offends nobody, and honors not only the First Amendment, but also the very tenets being professed during the board’s prayers.”