Tuesday, April 28, 1998 | 10:05 a.m.
A Las Vegas City Council member used a reference to Jesus Christ in the invocation just two weeks after the council received a written complaint from the American Civil Liberties Union for holding a prayer before its meetings.
City Councilman Gary Reese, a Mormon, was asked to give the prayer when the arranged reverend was unable to attend the meeting. At the end of the prayer, Reese said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."
Each meeting is started with a prayer from a different religion every week.
Reese's ending struck a cord with the executive director of the ACLU's Nevada chapter, Gary Peck, because Peck appeared at the previous City Council meeting complaining about the use of prayer before the meetings.
"The chambers are not a church," Peck told the council on Monday. "This is not an issue of religious freedom or of freedom of speech. It's wrong to have sectarian prayer in government."
Reese said he didn't end the prayer with Jesus Christ on purpose.
"I was taught to pray when I was 3 or 4 years old," he said. "That's how I end my prayers. That's the same way I said them with my grandson the other night."
Reese likened the ending of his prayer to the way fellow Councilman Michael McDonald makes the sign of the cross -- a traditionally Catholic action -- before and after the prayer at meetings.
"I don't make fun of the way he prays," Reese said. "I don't know why it's OK to make fun of the way I pray."
Mayor Jan Laverty Jones defended Reese's practice to Peck, saying that Reese didn't mean for anyone to be offended by his ending.
"He was asked to pray and he prayed in the only way he knows how," Jones said. "To single that out as an attempt at disrespect is ridiculous."
Peck said the issue wasn't disrespect as much as further proof that prayer in government meetings is a sensitive subject. He urged the City Council to adopt the guidelines of public prayer as laid out by the National Council of Christians and Jews. The council agreed to look at the guidelines and consider it.
"I'll take the guidelines to them," said Peck, after Monday's meeting. "I'm cautiously optimistic. We're just asking them to be respectful of diversity of religion."
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