Wed, December 6, 2006
By DEBORA VAN BRENK, LONDON FREE PRESS

An Ottawa group's push to ban the Lord’s Prayer from municipal council rooms doesnt, well, have a prayer with some local politicians.

"Not on my watch" will prayer be eliminated, Middlesex County Warden Joanne Vanderheyden said emphatically. Middlesex County will start its meeting Thursday, as it always does, with the Lord’s Prayer. The traditional prayer, which the Christian Bible says Jesus taught his disciples, is even part of the county's official rules of procedure.

But praying will be debated at the next Middlesex meeting, after council received a letter from Secular Ontario, a small Ottawa group that says public prayers by elected officials are offensive. Eighteen municipalities - also including St. Thomas, West Perth, Ingersoll and Perth County in our region - have received the letters.

Secular Ontario contends council prayers have been illegal since the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled against them in a Penetanguishene case in 1996. "That's binding on all municipal councils. Period," Secular Ontario president Henry Beissel told The Free Press. The problem is not necessarily the prayer's content but that one faith group is imposing itself on a pluralistic community, he said. Social justice is also laudable but, "What if a Marxist got up and read the Communist Manifesto?"

Vanderheyden said believers have rights, too: "What kind of decisions does he think we're going to make that are erroneous if we say the Lord's Prayer?" Beissel countered: "I wouldn't trust a council that would ask God for guidance for some zoning law down the street." He said councils could replace public prayer with a moment of silence.

That's an option favoured by Doug Reycraft, Mayor of Southwest Middlesex and president of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. He said the Charter of Rights and Freedoms should trump municipal tradition: "We're not the same province that we were 100 years ago."

Beissel said his group, which formed a month ago and has just five members, hasn't received a response from any of the 18. Secular Ontario has asked the province to enforce the no-prayer ruling. But even the legislature opens each day with prayer, including the Lord's Prayer.

He said the prayer has been part of every meeting since before his first election in 1974 and no one has ever objected. Ingersoll Mayor Paul Holbrough said he has received no complaints either and he would be happy to accommodate a member of any faith group. "It's not as if we discriminate here in Ingersoll."

Ingersoll Mayor Paul Holbrough said he has received no complaints either and he would be happy to accommodate a member of any faith group. "It's not as if we discriminate here in Ingersoll." A minister's son, Holbrough said council agreed to drop the issue, not the prayer. "Our community was settled on Christian morals and values. It's not like I've started this. It's a tradition in council and our community . . . "

"Geez, the next thing is they'll want to cancel Christmas."

London city council includes several faith-group representatives in the first meeting after each election.