Council member offers no prayer

Fredericksburg preacher's decision forestalls suit threatened by ACLU

FREDERICKSBURG - City Councilman Hashmel C. Turner Jr. did not offer his customary prayer at yesterday's meeting, forestalling the ACLU's threat to sue if Turner invoked the name of Jesus Christ.

But a defiant Turner also signaled that the issue is not settled, despite a recent federal court ruling that declared a similar practice by a South Carolina town council unconstitutional.

"I'm standing firm in my faith," Turner, associate minister at First Baptist Church of Love in neighboring Spotsylvania County, said before the council meeting. "There is no compromise."

In Turner's stead, Councilwoman Debby L. Girvan led the meeting in prayer, invoking "Almighty God," a nonsectarian reference permitted by U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

Turner stood with his eyes closed, his arms outstretched in front of him, palms up. He continued to mouth words after Girvan had concluded her prayer.

Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Virginia chapter, sent a letter to Turner on Friday, a day after the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the South Carolina case. The ruling from a three-judge panel for the Richmond-based court also applies in Virginia.

Turner said last night that he and city officials are still studying the ruling, and that he hopes that Great Falls, S.C., officials will appeal.

The ACLU, acting on a complaint from an anonymous Fredericksburg resident, had threatened legal action last fall over Turner's sectarian pray- ers. Turner stopped for a while but resumed the prayers after consulting with The Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville-based group whose causes include free religious expression.

The ACLU, which recently stood up for a pastor who baptized people at public parks in the Fredericksburg area, renewed its threat of a lawsuit against Turner and the City Council with last week's court ruling. Willis asserts that Turner's references to Jesus are tantamount to a governmental preference of one religion above another.

Rutherford Institute President John W. Whitehead said yesterday that he saw three options for Turner and the City Council to abide by the federal ruling: Offer a nonsectarian prayer that invokes God but not Jesus; invite others from the community and from different faiths to offer sectarian prayers; or offer sectarian prayers only for the benefit of council members.

"It's a very sad situation," added Whitehead, who described Turner as unassuming but "very serious about his faith."

Whitehead said the facts of the South Carolina case and the situation in Fredericksburg are different enough that The Rutherford Institute was still prepared yesterday to provide legal assistance to Turner. He also noted that the defendants in South Carolina might yet appeal the 4th Circuit ruling to the full appellate court or petition for the U.S. Supreme Court to review the findings.

In the South Carolina case, plaintiff Darla Kaye Wynne sued Great Falls, S.C., officials in 2001 after they refused to stop referring to Jesus in their prayers.

Wynne, a member of the pagan-based Wiccan faith, asked council members to mention God or a nondenominational deity. She was singled out, presumably by a council member, when she refused to stand during the prayers, according to the appellate court's findings.

Relying on a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the appellate panel ruled that the Great Falls town council could offer nonsectarian prayers that invoke "the Almighty."

"This opportunity does not, however, provide the Town Council, or any other legislative body, license to advance its own religious views in preference to all others," the appellate court ruled. "The First Amendment bars such official preference for one religion, and corresponding official discrimination against all others."