Some members of the Minnesota State Senate are uncomfortable when religious views which they do not hold are expressed, through prayer, in open session:
Prayer Dispute Divides Minnesota Senate
The prayer that prompted Bonoff's request was delivered Monday by the Rev. Dennis Campbell of Granite City Baptist Church in St. Cloud, who mentioned Jesus Christ by name three times and made other overt references to Christianity. Campbell later defended the content of his prayer.
"It makes anyone who doesn't pray through Jesus Christ, or believe in Jesus Christ, it makes them feel like they don't belong," said Sen. Ron Latz, a Democrat from St. Louis Park, who is Jewish.
It's understandable that at one's place of work, and in a body where the work of the public is done, that one should not need to be a member of a particular religion to fully participate.
But what remedy is being requested?
One obvious way to avoid this issue has been adopted in Hawaii:
The Hawaii State Senate in January ended opening prayers altogether out of concern over possible lawsuits on First Amendment grounds.
But the lawmakers in Minnesota, uncomfortable with somebody else's religion being made part of Senate proceedings, are not seeking a change which would solve this problem entirely.
A Jewish lawmaker is asking Minnesota Senate leaders to allow only nondenominational prayers to open sessions, after feeling "highly uncomfortable" when a Baptist pastor repeatedly mentioned Jesus Christ and Christianity in one of the invocations.
She explains:
"I'm a very religious woman and believe deeply in God," said Bonoff, of the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka. "We honor God in public and our political discourse, and that's proper. But in doing a nondenominational prayer we are honoring him without violating the separation of church and state."
But is that proper?
Where is the concern for those who do not share her deep belief in God? Might not believers in a different God, or atheists, be as uncomfortable with the prayer she is suggesting as she is with the one delivered by this Baptist pastor?
"It makes me [Sen. Latz] feel like I don't belong on the Senate floor to which I was duly elected by my constituents. In a government chamber, I and others should not be made to feel that way."
Perhaps Sen. Latz will advocate a policy like that of the Hawaii State Senate. Such a policy would surely uphold the separation of church and state spoken of by Sen. Bonoff more fully than her proposal.
The GOP gained control of the Senate after November's election.
"I believe we don't have a right to censor their prayers," Sen. David Brown, a Republican from Becker, said of visiting chaplains.
No censorship would be involved, Sen. Brown, in doing the legislative business of the people of Minnesota without inviting a chaplain to deliver a religious invocation.