Secular group wants Tampa council to stop praying

Like many other Florida cities, Tampa City Council meetings begin with a recital of the Pledge of Allegiance and a short prayer, known officially as the invocation.

It's a tradition that dates back decades, when the city council began inviting local and visiting clergy members to open the weekly meetings at Old City Hall with prayer.

But a nationwide watchdog for religious freedom has taken aim at the practice, claiming that city council members are violating the doctrine of separation of church and state.

In a letter to Mayor Pam Iorio and council members, the Freedom From Religion Foundation calls on the city to end the practice of opening council meetings with prayer and argues that council members should not "worship on the taxpayers' dime."

"Government prayer is unnecessary, inappropriate and divisive," wrote Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the foundation. "Calling upon council members to rise and pray, even silently, is coercive, embarrassing and beyond the scope of secular government."

Gaylor said the foundation, which works to protect the separation of church and state defined in the First Amendment, was responding to complaints from Tampa members who were "offended" that the council includes prayers as part of its regular meetings.

She said a review of the city council's minutes by the secular foundation revealed that a majority of the prayers were from the Christian faith, and "rarely, if ever, nonsectarian."

"Such prayer creates acrimony, makes minorities feel like political outsiders in their own community, and shows unconstitutional preference not just for religion over non-religion, but Christianity over other faiths," Gaylor wrote.

Public prayer has been a battlefield for years. A U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1983 affirmed the right for legislative bodies to host prayers before they conduct business, but more recent court opinions require these prayers be non-sectarian. For example, the use of Jesus, according to one recent court decision, would violate the First Amendment.

Tampa Council Chair Tom Scott, an ordained minister, said he understands that some people don't agree with the practice, but doesn't believe that laws are being broken.

"Both Congress and the state Legislature begin every one of their meetings with the invocation," he said. "How could it possibly be a violation of the First Amendment?"

As a Hillsborough County commissioner, Scott led the charge in 1996 to invite clergy members to the meetings to give a spoken prayer as part of the regular invocations.

He said council members reach out to representatives of many different denominations and doesn't see the city's tradition of permitting invocations as sanctioning any religion.

"We've even had an atheist do the invocation," Scott said. "Nobody is excluded."