Ravenswood (W.Va.) City Council members will no longer deliver religious invocations at official meetings — thanks to the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s constitutional advocacy.

A concerned community member reported that at the Jan. 20 meeting, Council Member Todd Ritchie led a prayer to begin the public meeting. Mayor Josh Miller asked all attendees to stand, then asked either for a moment of silence for a member of the public to lead a prayer. Ritchie said he would “step out of his role” to lead the prayer, remaining at his spot on the council bench. He gave a Christian prayer, directing it to the “Heavenly Father” and ending with “in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.” 

Because a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals precedent specifically weighed in against prayer led by local legislators, FFRF wrote a letter to the mayor asking that council-led prayers not become a practice at council meetings. As a policy, FFRF opposes any governmental prayer as exclusionary and inappropriate, and no city or county governmental body is required to open meetings with religious ritual.

“City Council members are free to pray privately or to worship on their own time in their own way,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Charlotte R. Gude stated. “They do not need to worship on taxpayers’ time.” 

Citizens, including Ravenswood’s nonreligious and minority faith citizens, may be compelled to come before the City Council on important civic matters and to participate in serious decisions affecting their livelihoods, property, children and quality of life, FFRF pointed out. Exclusively Christian prayers marginalize community members belonging to the 34 percent of West Virginians who are non-Christians, including the nearly one in three adult residents of the state who are religiously unaffiliated. It is coercive, embarrassing and intimidating for nonreligious individuals and members of minority religions to be required to make a public showing of their nonbelief (by not rising or praying) or else to display deference toward a religious sentiment in which they do not believe, but which their city council members clearly do.

Thankfully, FFRF’s work paid off. 

Miller responded to the state/church watchdog’s concern noting that the city has taken action to prevent further council-led prayers. “Members of the council have been apprised of the law as a result of your correspondence and will no longer offer an invocation or prayer either prior to or during any council meeting,” Miller replied in an official letter.

FFRF is always ready to rise to the occasion when government officials misuse their position for the sake of religion.

“FFRF knows that council-led religious invocations are inherently exclusionary,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor notes. “No one deserves to feel like an outsider just because one council member wants to deliver a prayer.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 41,000 members nationwide, including more than 100 members in West Virginia. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

The post FFRF ends prayer led by Ravenswood (W.Va.) City Council members appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.