Southpinellas: Leaders of a city: Let us pray?

Leaders of a city: Let us pray?

Most city governments open meetings with a dose of spirituality. South Pasadena will decide whether to do that, again.

By NEGAR TEKEEI

Most city governments open meetings with a dose of spirituality. South Pasadena will decide whether to do that, again.

SOUTH PASADENA -- Public meetings in this small city haven't opened with prayer in years.

But in a proposal arising from the Sept. 11 terror attacks, commissioners will consider lifting a ban that has been in effect since 1993.

"Other cities do it and our United States senators and congressmen do it," said Wayne Barr, the South Pasadena commissioner who suggested the resolution. "I think with what's going on in the world right now, it's a good time to do it."

The City Commission -- the mayor and four commissioners -- will vote Tuesday.

Before 1993, the four commissioners would rotate the responsibility of leading the prayer every four months.

The prayer, Barr said, would be a non-denominational, generic invocation "for God to look out for us."

Mayor Fred Held said he did not think the resolution would pass because of the history of controversy surrounding the issue.

"It's a question of what goes best in your city, and in our city we've found over the years that that's the way to do it," said Held, who has served on the City Commission for nearly two decades.

In a state where it has common to have a moment of silence, an invocation or a prayer along with a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance before meetings, South Pasadena's situation is a little rare.

Indeed, some officials from other municipalities say prayer is a necessary part of conducting city business.

"You have no hope of doing the right thing and making the right decisions without God," said Ron Kitchen, mayor of Crystal River. "We recognize that we need God's guidance and direction and intervention more than ever at certain times."

Mark Winn, St. Petersburg's chief assistant city attorney, said he was unaware of any controversy surrounding a prayer opening the regular City Council meetings. The city invites leaders from a variety of religious orders to lead the prayer at each meeting and, on the rare occasion that no member of the clergy is available, members of the council will sometimes say the prayer.

"There is no script," Winn said. "There is nothing they are required to say or prohibited from saying."

Jeanne Pugh, who led the movement against open prayer at South Pasadena meetings in 1993, said what officials and others say during the prayer is precisely the problem.

"There is no such thing as a generic prayer that would cover everything," she said. "Prayer is a such an important part of religion for a lot of people and always very personal and very private. It's not something to do in public and among nonbelievers."

Pugh, retired religion editor of the Times, acknowledges that prayer has become instilled in legislative bodies reaching to Congress. But, she says, that does not make the practice constitutional in a country that was built on the foundation of separating church and state.

And the debate goes on. In response to objections as well as, in many cases, encouragement, prayer and reverence at public meetings in Florida have taken a variety of forms -- from strictly religious invocations to moments of silence. The vast majority of city governments choose to include some form of spirituality in their meetings.

"Our country was developed to have these loyalties and to be "one nation under God,' " said Joan Runyon, the only other South Pasadena commissioner who has expressed support for Barr's proposal. "I think we need to get back to the basic American beliefs."

St. Petersburg's method of inviting leaders and members of every denomination to share an invocation before meetings has been largely successful, said Terri Scott, administrative services officer for St. Petersburg and the official in charge of coordinating each meeting's prayers.

"It sets the stage and the tone for the business that is to be conducted by seeking a higher power in order to make good decisions for our community," she said.

But for South Pasadena, the decision could rest not on the merits of faith but on the dynamics of a city.

"It all depends on what your city feels more comfortable with," Held said. "If it's not broken, don't fix it."