Does the First Amendment mean no prayer in a city council meeting?

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

It specifies the creation of laws to establish a national religion. I don’t see where it applies to a public prayer asking a deity for guidance in crafting decisions and laws and says nothing about what a city council does.

Some use two of our greatest statesmen, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, to support their argument against prayer.

Written in the front of Jefferson’s Bible, Jefferson wrote:

“I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus. I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our creator.”

On April 21, 1803, he wrote the following to Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence:

“My views ... are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from the anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others.”

In the same letter, he wrote:

“To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others.”

On Oct. 31, 1819, to William Short, he wrote:

“But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth.”

Many say Franklin wasn’t in favor of organized religion.

Like Jefferson Franklin didn’t care for many things done in the name of religion. However he did see a value for religion in our society. He relates this in his 1749 notes (unedited here) that “frequent Opportunities of showing the Necessity of a Publick Religion, from its Usefulness to the Publick: the Advantage of Religious Character among private Persons; the Mischiefs of Superstition, ect. and the Excellency of the Christian Religion above all others antient or modern.”

Franklin sensed a social usefulness of religion but objected to using it to proselytize.

Although a Deist, he abandoned logical Deism when writing that “this doctrine, though it might be true, was not very useful.”

Instead Franklin supported Christianity, as a close associate of Franklin wrote, because it “was highly indispensable to his kind of society.”

He also felt a belief in a watchful God was vital to the education of America’s youth and the morally depraved:

“If men are so wicked as we now see them with religion, what would they be if without it?”

For those who object to prayer or the use of the names God and Jesus Christ in city council meetings and use our founding fathers as justification, please read the “First prayer of the Continental Congress, 1774.” It’s apparent our founding fathers didn’t have a problem with it. Also, both houses of Congress and our own state Assembly have invocations before they start business.

The words, “separation between church and state” do not appear in the constitution. In a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association on Jan. 1, 1802, Jefferson used this phrase while assuaging their fears the government might institute a state-sanctioned religion.

Much later the Warren court, in the 1960s, incorrectly took Jefferson’s comments out of context and then reinterpreted the First Amendment to include individuals and not strictly limiting it to the government as originally intended by the Constitutional Fathers.

Discussing “the wall of separation between church and state,” Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court William Rehnquist wrote:

“The metaphor of a wall of separation is bad history and worse law. It has made a positive chaos out of court rulings. It should be explicitly abandoned.”

Let the majority of the citizens of this country, those who align with beliefs in a benevolent deity, keep prayer at City Council and not impose the will of minority beliefs on them.

• Dave Hardesty, a satellite communications engineer and former Tracy planning commissioner, is among a select group of local residents with columns in the Tracy Press.