There are two possibilities behind Mayor Bill Knight’s decision to add public prayer to Greensboro City Council meetings: either he does not understand that it’s a divisive move, or he does not care.

Neither one bodes well for a city in need of strong, unifying leadership.

You can read my newspaper column after the jump.

 

Silence is golden

By Edward Cone
News & Record
5-23-10

There are two possibilities behind Mayor Bill Knight’s decision to add public prayer to Greensboro City Council meetings: either he does not understand that it’s a divisive move, or he does not care.

Neither one bodes well for a city in need of strong, unifying leadership.

"We all believe in something," Knight told the News & Record about the move away from a moment of silence, long the Council tradition, and the imposition in its place of an official invocation. But not everyone believes in something that involves prayer, and not everyone who prays believes in public prayer at government meetings.

Knight, give or take an incendiary comment about the qualifications of his police chief, comes across as a well-meaning guy, with a practical approach to problems like funding the Nussbaum business incubator that seems appropriate to the moment and the job at hand.

But public prayer at a government meeting, something that to Knight represents a “distinctly America quality,” is hard to justify in a highly diverse city, much less in a country where the ground rules for the people’s business are laid out in a steadfastly secular Constitution that is as “distinctly America” as things get. And since public prayers must, by law, be deracinated and bloodless to the point of platitude, it’s hard to see how they do much to scratch the sectarian itch in any case.

At best, the call to prayer is a fix for something that is not broken. While other local governments find themselves embroiled in controversy and court cases over invocations, Greensboro has managed quite well without mixing religion and politics. Councilman Danny Thompson says he already uses the moment of silence in ways that suit his own beliefs and preferences, and that he prays whenever he has the opportunity, so clearly the lack of a public prayer has not constrained him, or anyone else who wishes to pray before or during a meeting.

At worst, the sudden change indicates the coming of the culture wars to a council that, while far from perfect, has managed in large part to avoid such diversions. Reader comments beneath the online version of the News & Record article announcing Knight’s decision were numerous and sometimes vitriolic. It’s hard to see how pouring energy into this sort of argument makes sense, especially at a time when the core business of paying for basic government services is so challenging, with more budget pain on the way.

It could be that introducing a potentially divisive issue into local politics serves an agenda, whether or not Knight himself subscribes to it. There is a steady drumbeat in the blogosphere and the alternative press to make Greensboro’s non-partisan elections more explicitly about party affiliation and ideology. Knight’s surprising win last November was portrayed in some quarters as something akin to a Republican coup.

The strategy of putting even an implied R or D beside each candidate’s name strikes me as an extremely foolish one for the GOP, given Greensboro’s general political climate and historic party loyalties. This is, after all, the same patch of blue on the electoral map where Sarah Palin stood in a mansion and spoke about being in the “real America,” only to have an overwhelming majority of its real American inhabitants vote for the Obama-Biden ticket.

But just because the unintended consequences of increased partisanship might be amusing doesn’t make it desirable. And just how ugly the politics of sectarianism can be is already clear at the local level: consider, for example, a series of blog posts written by Thompson’s closest ally in the local blogosphere, Joe Guarino, who sneers at Senator Kay Hagan for belonging to the “liberal” First Presbyterian Church. That is not a course by which to steer our politics.

A little prayer at the beginning of a City Council meeting does not have to lead to such ugliness, nor is it a harbinger of theocracy. Many of us would find it appealing, or at least inoffensive. But the moment of silence -- so rare a commodity in today’s world -- is a common denominator that meets many needs without raising hackles or excluding anyone from a public occasion. It’s served Greensboro well for some time now, and we should keep it instead of making this radical change.

© News & Record 2010

Comments

[Ed Cone]

"I just don't understand the obsession on either side of the issue."

Noted.

[beelzebubba]

jeff: if you mean Mammon, one of the lesser gods who always runs a huge tab and devises ways for the unknowing and unborn to be shackled with the debt, i dunno. I would pull back the curtains first and see if they had any shame. If they didn't have any shame after their hoax was revealed, i would put them to work scrubbing the blood off their altars on CSpan. They're not bad men, just bad wizards.