Municipal leaders won’t stop prayer

Jeffrey Libby

Friday, June 28, 2002 | 11:14 a.m.

John Bagwell, pastor at Giving Life Ministries Christian church in Henderson, says he will listen for God's inspiration Tuesday before he leads the Henderson City Council and residents in prayer.

Bagwell is one of the hundreds of religious leaders who each year add the ingredient of God to government meetings in Southern Nevada, usually at the request of secretaries filling calendars at least a month in advance.

Prayers like Bagwell's, which often ask that God grant the City Council fairness and wisdom, have started the meetings for as long as most can remember, maybe for as long as schoolchildren rubbing sleep from their eyes have mumbled their way past "one nation under God" during the Pledge of Allegiance.

City officials around the Las Vegas Valley on Thursday defended the practice with the same apparent unity that they opposed the ruling a day earlier by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- that the Pledge of Allegiance as written today is unconstitutional.

A University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor and a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union were the lone voices of dissent, arguing that mainstream religions trample on the rights of minority voices and should be scrubbed from government meetings.

Boulder City Councilman Joe Hardy has played both roles at council meetings, stepping from behind his plastic nameplate to invoke the name of "Jesus Christ our savior" at the public microphone.

Hardy says that while as a government official he cannot impose his religious beliefs on others, it is his right to express his religious beliefs. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech guarantee that, he said.

"We live in a blessed nation and for lack of a better phrase, 'In God we trust.' It's a real and literal belief we have as Americans," Hardy said.

Boulder City and Las Vegas Valley municipalities do their best to include as many faiths as possible, officials say.

Since January, invocations at 12 Henderson City Council meetings included Baptist, Mormon, Episcopalian, Methodist and other Christian faiths. A rabbi prayed at a June 2001 meeting, City Clerk Monica Simmons said.

In 22 years at City Hall, Simmons said she can't remember a resident complaining about the inclusion of prayer at a council meetings.

"In fact, more often, I've heard that prayer isn't included enough," Simmons said.

North Las Vegas Michael Montandon said he has heard similar comments from residents.

"I believe when the founding fathers wrote the Constitution, they were absolutely opposed to state-mandated religion, but they never thought we should be without religion," Montandon said.

Ted Jelen, UNLV chairman of the department of political science, said there is no such provision in constitutional law.

"A common misconception Americans have is that we have to be nice to Hindus and Muslims, but who cares about the atheists?" Jelen said. "The point of the Bill of Rights is that certain things are out of reach of the majority. The point is that it's the people who are most marginalized that are protected."

But Bagwell argued against the costs to society of that protection.

"If we're going to take God out of everything, from the schools, from government, from our nation, how can we expect to call God and get his help?" Bagwell said.

Allen Lichtenstein, ACLU attorney, said the government's role is not accommodating God. Constitutional law says not only should the government refrain from choosing between religions, Lichtenstein said, but it should not choose between religion or a lack of religion either.

"There's a sort of blindness on the part of the majority. It doesn't want to see that its beliefs are not universally held and shouldn't have to be universally held," Lichtenstein said.

"To paraphrase James Madison, when government gets into religion, it makes for bad government and bad religion."