ROTHENBURGER: Say a prayer for our politicians, as long as it’s the right kind

I’d be interested to know how many pieces of legislation have not been passed and how many tax dollars have been wasted by spending a couple of minutes on an opening prayer.

The prayers are often creative as well as entertaining.

“Some of the more perplexing prayers we encountered included thanking God for a shipbuilding contract, praising beef, and praying for BCIT contract negotiations,” according to Noah Laurence, who worked on a study of prayers that were recited in the Ledge between 2003 and 2019. The resulting report is called House of Prayers.

Former Kamloops-North Thompson MLA Kevin Krueger tended towards a practical approach. He once thanked God for legislation forcing HEU members back to work. On another occasion, he prayed for BCTF contract talks.

The real gist of the campaign — which is that opening prayers by public bodies discriminate against those of non-Christian religions or no religion at all — is legit.

It’s no secret that I’m a recovering atheist, i.e. an agnostic. As a kid, I was discriminated against by school authorities for refusing to stand and recite the Lord’s Prayer.

I don’t mind opening prayers at public events as long as they’re equitable, and that would include humanists. I once carried a humanist “prayer” in my wallet in case I was ever called upon. It expressed thanks for the occasion without citing a higher authority.

Even though prayers in the Ledge are supposed to reflect religious diversity, the Humanist Association says almost all the prayers are Christian.

On the first day of this fall’s session, Abbotsford-Mission MLA Simon Gibson kicked things off with — you guessed it — the Lord’s Prayer. It was like a flashback to my youth. The Lord’s Prayer, by the way, hasn’t been heard in the public school system in three decades.

Sometimes, it’s hard to know who these Ledge prayers are being directed at, or if they’re just being sent to whoever is out there, like those messages we ping out to the universe in case it reaches the ears of somebody living on another planet.

There was a prayer, for example, for equality, and another for respectful debate (that one comes under the heading of wishful thinking). North Vancouver Seymour MLA Jane Thornthwaite asked the assembly to think about those with mental illness, which didn’t sound as though it was necessarily Christian, until she concluded with “Amen.”

I don’t know why the Ledge hangs on to the prayer. City councils had to give it up quite a while ago, because the courts told them to.

In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that municipal councils aren’t allowed to begin meetings with prayers. That didn’t affect the Kamloops council because, for many years, it’s opened meetings with non-religious recitals.

Usually, they contain a message for council. For example, one meeting of council was opened with a few lines from singer-songwriter Robert C. Hunter, who wrote for the Grateful Dead:

“You who choose to lead, must follow, but if you fall, you fall alone. If you should stand, then who’s to guide you? If I knew the way, I would take you home.”

It must be fun picking out those readings. They take all of 20 seconds or so and add a nice touch to the meetings.

The reciting of prayers or readings at the beginning of meetings has become a thing, though. There are three choices: stop doing it, make sure the religions are rotated, or ignore religion and just say something interesting, as per Kamloops council.

If we’re going to stop doing it, then it would only be fair to end the habit of indigenous prayers to the Creator at public events, as well. That gets us into the reconciliation issue, but fair is fair.

Maybe the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly (which, I gather, is sort of like our regional districts) in Homer, Alaska, has the answer, or not. After a court ruled against a bylaw that had required invocations to be performed by “official organizations,” the borough opened it up to nontraditional religions.

It was the chance the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster had been waiting for. The church preaches that an invisible drunk monster made from spaghetti and meatballs and sporting “noodly appendages” created the universe.

Wearing a spaghetti strainer on his head, Pastafarian pastor Barrett Fletcher appeared before the borough assembly to “invoke the power of the true inebriated creator,” advising its members to access “an ample supply of their favorite beverage” after the meeting.

He ended with a hearty “Ramen,” a nice twist on the usual “Amen.”

Fletcher’s real purpose, though, was to protest prayers at government meetings, a practice he called offensive.

Closer to home, our federal politicians must have missed the memo about the 2015 Supreme Court ruling banning City council prayers because, at the beginning of each sitting of the House of Commons, they continue to offer thanks to “Almighty God.”

Borrowing from philosopher Aretha Franklin, “All we want is a little respect, just a little bit.”

Ramen.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and newspaper editor. He writes five commentaries a week for CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.

by Mel Rothenburger

ROTHENBURGER: Say a prayer for our politicians, as long as it’s the right kind

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