House lacks formal policy

RALEIGH

Over the past six years, prayers offered in the N.C. House of Representatives have referenced "Almighty God," "Our Heavenly Father," the "God of Infinite Patience" and our "Holy Lord."

They've quoted Psalms and Acts, asked for "the wisdom of Solomon," "the patience of Job" and reminded people that he who is without sin should cast the first stone. But they've rarely -- almost never, it would seem -- mentioned Jesus.

There is no formal policy, which led the Rev. Ron Baity of Berean Baptist Church in Winston-Salem to publicly demand on Thursday an apology from House Speaker Joe Hackney after Baity's planned weeklong visit to the House to give the opening prayer was cut to one day when he invoked the name of Jesus.

Baity's press conference and the issue of public prayer before the legislature was carried in several state media outlets this week, and he was interviewed by Fox News Radio.

Baity is the president of Return America, a group that opposes "any governmental control over churches and pastors," and opposes the theory of evolution, according to its website. He also has been active in the tea-party movement. He said yesterday that he was specifically asked not to mention Jesus in his prayer, a government intrusion that he said threatens his First Amendment rights.

"They're telling me how I need to pray," he said. "That is the establishment of a religion."

The House speaker's office notes that Baity was allowed to give his prayer, complete with its mention of Jesus; he just wasn't invited back.

"We have at least two Jewish members in the chamber and, on any given day, there's no telling who's visiting," Bill Holmes, a spokesman for Hackney, said yesterday. "So we try to respect that."

Hackney and Minority Leader Paul Stam have promised to review the protocol with an eye toward doing what is constitutionally correct. That could lead the issue of sectarian prayer to court at the state level; a federal judge ruled in January in a long-running Forsyth County case that the board of commissioners could not begin its meeting with sectarian prayers.

Daily prayers are recorded in the legislative journal, and the House clerk's office collects them every two years in a book. A review of House invocations from 2005 through 2008 turned up only one reference to Jesus, and even that one may not have happened. There also weren't any references other deities.

Most of the prayers were given by James Harry, who served as the House chaplain until midway through the 2009 session. His prayers mentioned only God.

"Though there were some who were offended and some who even questioned my Christianity, I never felt as if I were betraying my loyalty to God in Christ," Harry said in an e-mail yesterday. "Invoking the name of Jesus in a taxpayer-funded government arena does have the potential of making the prayer sectarian."

Since Harry left, guest preachers have been giving the invocation, and legislators themselves sometimes do the honors. These prayers aren't yet collected in a book, but a spot check of 24 invocations recorded in House journals didn't turn up any references to Jesus.

Ruth Peterson, of the Anointed One Church of Deliverance in Ayden, gave a House invocation in June 2008. She began by saying "We come boldly to the throne today in the authority of the name of Jesus," according to the prayer records.

But, yesterday, Peterson said she thinks she only wrote Jesus for submission, and that when she read it, she left him out during the actual prayer.

"I think that we should honor and respect those that have given us the privilege to pray for our state and our nation," Peterson said yesterday.

"I think that as preacher, we pray," she said. "We don't necessarily have to say in the name of Jesus, because when we pray it, we know. We understand why we're praying."

At least one rabbi has been invited to pray before the House in the past several years, and he said he wasn't given any specific guidelines for his prayer. But Rabbi Yosef Levanon said he was told "to be aware of the fact that there are different people there, of different backgrounds ... (your prayer) should apply to everyone."

Levanon opened his prayer with Hebrew words that mean "our Father in Heaven."

"I did not feel myself a stranger," said Levanon, of the Beth Israel Congregation in Fayetteville. "I did not feel any problem at all. I think I remember that quite a few people came to tell me they enjoyed the invocation."

Pastor John Howard, formerly of Ardmore United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem but now a preacher at Mount Pleasant United Methodist in Greensboro, also prayed before the House last year. He said that he wasn't specifically asked to keep Jesus out of his prayer, "but it was apparent to me ... that that was not to be done."

"I would prefer no restrictions," Howard said yesterday. "But I definitely think it's important to pray for our leaders in whatever way that we can."

ctfain@yahoo.com