Hawaii Senate Feels Pressure and Discontinues Prayer

The senate of Hawaii had a practice of opening meetings with prayer. Apparently these prayers sometimes invokes Christian phrases, and now the senate has received notice from the American Civil Liberties Unions (ACLU) that they must stop of face a lawsuit. The ACLU bases such actions on the so-called "separation of church and state." The senate considered using a non-sectarian prayer instead, but finally voted to just discontinue prayer altogether.

To say that such a prayer is unconstitutional is an interesting concept, but is inherently misdirected. The very men who wrote the Constitution opened their first official meeting with a prayer, and the presiding chaplain read from a psalm. Did these men not understand the document they wrote? Were they hypocrites? Or is it possible that modern courts have essentially re-written the Constitution to fit their ideological views?

After the 1947 Supreme Court decision that started to erode the rights of religion, the veryACLU mentioned above said that the decision "gave new meaning to the Establishment Clause." That says it pretty well. Unfortunately, it is not the job of the court to give new meaning to laws. They are supposed to decide how to fairly apply the laws as they were written by the people charged with creating them.

Read the Hawaii story below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/us/22brfs-AFTERCOMPLAI_BRF.html?_r=1