Without A Prayer

Elanna Cahn — May 30, 2014 – 9:56 am | Civil Liberties | Rosh Chodesh Comments (0) Add a comment

There is probably no issue that is more defining for American Jews than prayer in civic settings.  Some of us are able to remember when the public school day began with the recitation of a Christian liturgical selection, and more of us remember concerts in winter and spring that were primarily carols and hymns.  And all us of listen to opening and closing words at city council meetings, state legislatures and Presidential inaugurals waiting for the inevitable reference to a particular religious tradition that defines us as just-slightly-less-than.

A narrow decision by the Supreme Court permits ceremonial prayers recited in governmental gatherings to be blatantly sectarian. The caution is that they do not create a pattern of proselytizing or exclusion.  The five Justices who shared the majority may not recognize that the very institution of ceremonial prayer fails both tests.

I have long admired the Protestant Christian tradition of original or spontaneous words of devotion.  It is a contrast with what most Jews know from synagogue or personal prayer.  (Leon Wieseltier describes davvenen as “saying important things way too fast.”)  I have cultivated my own practice of improvised prayer precisely because I know how important those words are to me.

So the Justices’ dismissal of the impact of specific content of prayers because they are merely “ceremonial” is a double blow.  It at once validates a primarily Christian practice and diminishes the meaning of those words as incidental (for those of faith and those of no faith).  I won’t take issue with the premise that opening a meeting with inspirational words is a time-honored practice in American society.  But I take great issue with the notion that those words are mere place-holders, the rhetorical equivalent of the appendix, only to be noticed when it becomes inflamed.

I wonder whether the Justices would have upheld a requirement that the ceremonial opening of city council meetings be a d’var torah or similar wisdom teaching, or a reading of an “appropriate” passage of the Qur’an or Bhagavad Gita or some else’s scriptures.  And I wonder if they would have likewise declared the words of those sacred teachings to be incidental, especially if by implication or accusation they marginalized the central tenets of their own faith.

Of course they would not, nor would the adherents of the notion of “Christian America,” busy high-fiving each other over what they see as a validation of their misguided notions.

Leonard Fein, a major voice for progressive Jews, rightly observes that people should bring their religious ideas and values to the public square, not their practices.  We should be diligent in safeguarding the Christianness of Christian practice and the religiousness of other religious practice so that we can expect the protection of the Jewishness of Jewish practice.

Comments

There are no comments for this entry