Campaign against Lord's Prayer gains momentum

By David F. Dawes

Gordon Schermerhorn, mayor of the town of Napanee, Ontario, is refusing to eliminate the Lord's Prayer from his council meetings.

Secular Ontario, a small Ottawa-based group, sent a letter to 18 municipalities across the province in November, calling on them to stop using this "Christian ritual" at the beginning of their council meetings. Already, some recipients have taken action.

In December, Middlesex County council agreed to discontinue its opening prayer. In late January, the Durham Region council also capitulated. After some heated debate, a committee formed by the council came up with a compromise. Instead of officially opening council meetings, prayer will be held by voluntary participants just before council convenes.

The campaign has attracted some attention from the media -- and Secular Ontario president Henry Beissel, speaking from his home, said he was surprised it had created such a stir. He and his colleagues, he said, considered the matter quite straightforward.

The crux of the matter, according to the group's letter, is that Ontario's Court of Appeal "ruled in the case of Freitag vs. the Town of Penetanguishene (1999) that this practice is illegal and a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights."

Beissel said he and the other members of his group are "humanists" who are simply concerned about the separation of church and state. "We found that this illegal practice was happening," he said. "It is the issue which brought us together. We should all be concerned that the law be observed across the country."

Asked to describe his personal beliefs, Beissel said, "Nobody has the truth. I don't either. I was raised as a Catholic. Now I'm an agnostic -- but not an atheist. An atheist is like a theist: he avows a truth he cannot prove."

He insisted that, despite the focus of his group's campaign, they were not singling out Christianity. He noted that, last year, when Ontario was grappling with the possible implementation of Islamic sharia law, he staged an ongoing protest against that campaign.

Response to Secular Ontario's campaign has been polarized since it began.

Last November, Peterborough councilor Bill Juby told the Ottawa Sun the anti-prayer initiative was "absolutely asinine," and added: "This country was founded on Christian principles, and our laws are based on Christian principles."

"I just cannot be a hypocrite and stand there and recite it when I don't believe it," said Uxbridge Mayor Bob Shepherd to the Durham council during that debate.

Mark Robinson of the Humanist Society of Canada told CityNews.ca, "The Lord's Prayer is a Christian prayer, and there's not just Christians within the council or in the meetings."

Ottawa Sun writer Jorge Barrera characterized Secular Ontario as "the prayer police . . . on the hunt [with] a hit list."

Marianne Meed Ward, however, writing in the Toronto Sun, declared the controversy "a tempest in a chalice." She added: "I was frankly surprised to read that there is any kind of prayer at the start of our government meetings. Given some of the decisions that get made, I'm quite convinced God has left the building."

Beissel said he had received a lot of responses via email -- a considerable amount of which he termed "hate mail." Some of it, he said, was "obscene in the extreme."

He pronounced himself dissatisfied with the Durham decision, terming it "silly sophistry." The new form of prayer, he said, is still "in a public space." A city council chamber, he emphasized, "is an official government setting." Prayer in that setting, he asserted, "is discriminatory." Onlookers who don't share the faith being proclaimed, he said, "feel second class."

"Where are my rights?" responded Mayor Gordon Schermerhorn of Greater Napanee, one of the targeted municipalities. He added: "I can't believe we are being harassed for saying the Lord's Prayer. It's a simple little prayer to forgive trespasses. With all the issues we have to deal with in Canada, why make such a fuss about this?"

He described his community as "a small municipality," with several mainstream Christian denominations and a Jehovah's Witness congregation.

Asked about his personal beliefs, he said he had been raised by Pentecostal parents. He defined a 'Christian' as "someone who has asked for forgiveness -- because all sinners must repent. I don't consider myself a Christian in that sense. I believe in the Christian faith from a philosophical viewpoint. But I'm not asking anyone to believe as I do."

As for the municipality's councilors, Schermerhorn asserted: "I would say they consider themselves Christians."

Before Secular Ontario's campaign, he said, "we never had a complaint about the Lord's Prayer. The last big issue was over the use of landfill. I've had more support for the Lord's Prayer than I ever had over the landfill issue."

Until recently, Napanee's council opened its meetings with the prayer. However, said Schermerhorn, "Now I ask if anyone wants to leave first. Then we say the prayer. I don't believe we're imposing a religion on anyone. We give people a chance to leave the room." He said the council had no plans to change its policy.

"It's demeaning to ask people to leave a public space," responded Beissel. "Why should they have to leave the room? That's offensive; it's absolutely tactless." Further, he said, "For a public official to openly declare that he will continue to break the law is disturbing."

Asked whether he felt a solution could be reached to address Secular Ontario's concerns, Schermerhorn said: "I don't have any idea. But I would be willing to look at anything. I'll do whatever my council wants."

Asked about the likelihood of a compromise, Beissel said: "I really don't see that as possible, without demeaning someone."

Political decision making, he insisted, should be free of religious influences. "I'd be very disturbed if people needed divine guidance to decide where to put septic tanks."

Christians, he said, "should read their Bibles. In Matthew 6:6, Christ says you should not pray in public. He says it's the hypocrites who pray in public." Believers who object to the aims of his group's campaign, he said, are "doing a great disservice to their religion."

Canada, he continued, "is no longer a Christian country. We live in a new world." Tradition, he added, is not sufficient justification to continue practices some deem unacceptable. "People say, 'We've been doing this for 200 years.' We also hung horse thieves and kept slaves 200 years ago."

Beissel hastened to add: "I don't really wish to talk anyone out of praying in their homes. It's a private thing. We don't mean to impinge on people's religious beliefs." However, he added, "I don't go to City Council to hold forth about my views of the universe. Why do people have to make a public spectacle of themselves?"

The Lord's Prayer, insisted Schermerhorn, "has been said in Napanee council for hundreds of years. We're a community which will be strong about this." The council, he said, has "had a lot of support" on this issue.

"I've heard that Secular Ontario is writing us another letter," he continued, adding: "I don't like threats." He said he would be consulting lawyers about the possibility that Beissel's group might take the Napanee council to court. "We're going to fight this to the bitter end. But I still have to get an idea of how much it could cost."

Asked whether his group was indeed planning to go ahead with court action against recalcitrant municipalities, Beissel expressed reluctance. "We're really hoping reason prevails."

However, he maintained that, because legal precedents bolster Secular Ontario's stance, "it's very unlikely we would lose."

Related stories:

Durham praises the Lord
After three hours of impassioned -- and unopposed -- pleas from Durham residents to continue the tradition of reciting the Lord's Prayer at regional council meetings, the finance committee decided yesterday to do just that. "God is the Supreme Being. Period. Full stop," declared Oshawa Mayor John Gray, who said he'd received "countless emails and letters" urging council to keep the Lord's Prayer. "We have to heed the message."
Toronto Star, January 18

Dump prayers, says crusader
Henry Beissel is unrepentant in his crusade to get rid of the Lord's Prayer from municipal council meetings across the Greater Toronto Area and the rest of Ontario. As one of the founding members of Secular Ontario last fall, the former English professor from Concordia University said the goal, however, extends beyond the Lord's Prayer to the non-denominational prayers that are now used by several GTA councils.
Toronto Star, January 19

Ontario councils refuse to drop prayer
Municipal councils across Ontario are defying a call for them to stop reciting the Lord's Prayer before their meetings. An advocacy group called Secular Ontario sent letters to 18 municipal councils in November claiming the recitation of the prayer violated a 1999 Ontario Court of Appeal ruling. Since then, only Middlesex County has abolished the prayer. Meanwhile, many others -- including Durham Region, Oshawa, Peterborough and Grey County -- have either ignored Secular Ontario's warning or voted to maintain their current practice.
National Post, January 19

February 1/2007