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COUNTY COMMISSION: Prayer policy coming to public meeting agendas

By TIM COOK, Spirit editor and reporter

 Feb 22, 2023 Updated Feb 22, 2023

Prayer will soon become a regular agenda item for the Jefferson County Commission meetings. 

After discussing and adjusting a prayer policy during three previous meetings, the county commission passed a final version last week on a 3-2 vote. 

Commissioner Jennifer Krouse proposed adding voluntary prayers to the Pledge of Allegiance to the commission’s agendas during her first meeting as a commissioner.

“This commission for a very long time has had a very hard time, and this could only help,” she said while introducing her proposal on Jan. 5. “There’s no prayer in this room, and look at what’s happened. A lot of people distrust our government … I do believe that prayer can only help us.”

Krouse said a pastor or minister will lead a prayer for the commission’s next March 2 regular meeting. The policy the commission adopted has a list of clergy assembled to create a rotating roster for different pastors, ministers, rabbis or imams to offer a prayer in person.

The adopted policy restricts a commissioner from stepping in to lead a prayer, a provision Krouse opposed as too rigidly impractical if a religious leader can’t attend a meeting.

“My fear is that if, despite our best efforts, we don’t have enough interest, we will end up with a de facto moment-of-silence policy rather than a prayer policy,” she said. “And that is unacceptable in my view.”

Under the final policy, adopted after some word-smithing, a prayer will be offered only before regular meetings, but not special meetings. A county attorney tapped out a first policy draft that he thought would pass Constitutional muster and after several citizens offered impassioned public comments for and against the policy.

Commissioners Clare Ath and Tricia Jackson joined Krouse in supporting the final prayer policy to have prayers at commission meetings. Commissioners Steve Stolipher and Jane Tabb voted against adding formal prayer to the policy. 

Stolipher said he doesn’t oppose public prayer but prefers allowing a moment of silence instead. A moment of silence, he said, would allow anyone to pray while also avoiding potential legal entanglements over Constitutional challenges. 

“I think it will be cleaner and easier if we just have a moment of silence,” he said. “Other jurisdictions do the same. They just do a moment of silence.”

Tabb also said she supports prayer but “vehemently” opposed adopting a prayer policy. She said offering a prayer could alienate residents of different faiths or no faiths.

“I think each of us can pray in our own way,” she said last month. “I don’t think we need to bring it to this table, because it doesn’t represent everyone in our county—and this country was built on religious freedom, and that is freedom to worship as you wish or not wish.” 

Tabb also was concerned that developing and maintaining a list of clergy to attend meetings is an extra burden on busy commission staff. “It’ll be work for them to manage,” she said.

Krouse said she would be available to help with the task if the commission allowed her. 

Ath, who has researched constitutional issues involved with prayer at public meetings, said such public prayer must be voluntary—“not coercive”—and not favor any religion over another. For legal reasons, she said, it was important that a commissioner not lead a meeting prayer. 

Ath agreed with Krouse that no current case law prevents a commissioner from leading a public meeting prayer. Still, she said she feared taking the step would create an opportunity for a person or group to file a lawsuit to set a legal precedent about that question.

Ath provided the clinching majority vote for the prayer policy after the provision allowing a commissioner to offer a prayer was dropped.

Then, just before a final vote was taken, Ath offered a personal perspective and experience on the issue. She said at a previous meeting a citizen called her a “religious bigot.” 

“I wanted to make it clear that that is not the case,” she continued, explaining how many members of her husband’s family survived the Communist persecution and genocide of the killing fields of Cambodia during the middle and late 1970s.

“Unfortunately, not all of his family made it out,” Ath said, explaining that her husband’s uncle was executed by the Khmer Rouge for his faith. 

“So the reason that I am very passionate about this,” she said, “is because America is one of the very few places that was founded on religious freedom. It is legal. It is completely within our right to publicly profess your faith.”

Ath said she appreciates the preference for having a moment of silence that Stolipher supported and the feeling that prayer should be private that Tabb expressed. Ath also said having a religious leader begin a public meeting is an opportunity for the community to uphold and remember their right to religious freedom.