"Government officials can worship, pray, and participate in religious events in their personal capacities. But they are not permitted to provide credibility or prestige to their religion by lending a government office and government title to religious events."

This morning, many City residents braved the cold to attend the 46th Annual Mayor's Community Prayer Breakfast. In addition to Mayor Gahan and his family, the event was also attended by two former New Albany Mayors, Bob Real and Warren Nash. 

Make that 302 members in Indiana.

In complete candor, I'd completely forgotten about the very existence of the Freedom from Religion Foundation until learning of the FFRF's involvement with asking questions about the Mayor's Community Prayer Breakfast.

Pesky church-state issues: The Freedom from Religion Foundation investigates the Mayor's Community Prayer Breakfast.

It's an oversight easily corrected. Consider joining the Freedom from Religion Foundation. We just did.

Join FFRF or Renew Your Membership

Membership supports FFRF's hard-working 13-person office, our educational and legal work, and includes: Ten issues a year of 24-page Freethought Today newspaper fully reporting on FFRF actions and news, as well as "Private Line" (a twice-yearly insider report on the Foundation). It also gives you a vote during elections at the annual convention (household memberships get 2 votes), and discounted prices for FFRF books and CDs. All dues and donations are deductible for income-tax purposes.

"If you have had it up to here with faith-based initiatives, creationism and clerical prying into our private lives, FFRF is the organization for you. This scrappy group brings lawsuits against church-state entanglements and puts up witty billboards and bus signs promoting, well, freedom from religion. Reason's Greetings!" — Katha Pollitt

In the past, I've tended to ignore the Mayor's Community Prayer Breakfast. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it just gets tiresome contemplating New Albany's persistent inability to think. However, the more I've thought about the church-state principles involved, there is a corresponding realization that the city's rote denial of direct support is a non-starting yawner.

As usual, Jeff summarizes the issue:

The space used for planning meetings is publicly funded. Having a meeting at 7 pm doesn't change that. The same is true of the event space. The City's marketing is easy enough to see as well. Normally, a group would have to pay or otherwise provide those things via private means. In this case, the citizens of New Albany are paying for them.

Naturally, the city of New Albany ignored the FFRF's request. You can almost hear the snickering: Church-state separation issues? Here in our humble Truck Through City? They're not going to make us read books or anything, are they?

As I wrote yesterday:

The real core answer here is that we do it the way we do it because no one's ever thought about what it would mean to do it differently -- this as well as so many other examples of peculiar institutions existing in a vacuum outside the realm of modernity.

Where do I sign up for the lawsuit? Following is the news release by the FFRF referenced in the newspaper article.

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FFRF urges mayor to cancel city-sponsored prayer breakfast

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national state/church watchdog with 21,500 members, including more than 300 in Indiana, is pressing Mayor Jeff Gahan of New Albany, Ind., to end the city's extensive involvement in a long-running prayer breakfast.

New Albany's 46th annual Mayor's Community Prayer Breakfast is scheduled for this Sat., Nov. 15. The event is promoted on the city's website as a time to "come together to celebrate the diversity within God's family." The city also put an ad for the prayer breakfast on citizens' municipal utility bills, emphasizing the words "prayer" and "faith." City Hall's phone number is listed on both the city website and the utility insert as the number to call for more information about the prayer breakfast.

Senior Staff Attorney Rebecca Markert sent Gahan a letter on Nov. 7 urging him to dissociate his office and the city from the prayer breakfast. "Your participation in this event, and the city's apparent coordination of the event, pose serious constitutional separation of state and church concerns," she wrote. "Since any reasonable city resident would logically interpret the city's actions in this case as government endorsement of religion, the city must refrain from expending any further taxpayer dollars, using publicly funded employees, and drawing on any other publicly funded resources to promote the religious prayer breakfast."

FFRF also sent the mayor an open records request for financial records and correspondence related to the event.

Markert directed Gahan to an injunction FFRF won against the mayor of Denver in 1993 over his promotion and endorsement of a "Day of Prayer." The court enjoined the mayor and other city officials "acting in an official capacity from promoting, endorsing, or supporting the Day of Prayer."

FFRF objects to officials lending their government titles to prayer events, as is the case with the Mayor's Community Prayer Breakfast. "Government officials can worship, pray, and participate in religious events in their personal capacities. But they are not permitted to provide credibility or prestige to their religion by lending a government office and government title to religious events. Their office and title belong to 'We the people,' not the office's temporary occupant," wrote Markert.

"FFRF receives so many complaints about governmental prayer, because religious sponsorship by our government turns believers into insiders, and nonbelievers — or those from minority beliefs — into outsiders. The New Albany prayer breakfast entanglement is a particularly egregious example of an inappropriate union between government and religion," said FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.

FFRF, based in Madison, Wis., is North America's largest association of freethinkers.