LODI, CALIF. — Small cities in California are facing high unemployment, drained treasuries and now what some residents see as an assault on the only sacred moment in municipal affairs: the invocation at the start of city council meetings.
Turlock, Tracy, Tehachapi, Lancaster -- all have been threatened in the last few months with lawsuits claiming that prayer at meetings breaches the wall between church and state.
Nowhere has the ensuing debate played out more dramatically than in Lodi, where, after a tumultuous five-hour meeting this week, the City Council voted not only to continue invocations but also to allow phrases such as "in Jesus' name."
"For whatever reason, Lodi seems to have become ground zero for deciding this issue," City Atty. Steve Schwabauer said at Wednesday's meeting, which drew a passionate crowd of more than 700.
At times, rhetoric boiled over as speakers trooped to the microphone in a local auditorium -- the only room in town that could hold the anticipated crowd. A woman who identified herself as an atheist blasted Christianity, blaming it for the decimation of native Americans, the Salem witch burnings and "the oppression of all non-Christians." Several speakers countered with stories of their personal salvation and dire warnings about the consequence of snuffing out prayer at city hall.
Frank Nolton, a local pastor, lamented the loss of school prayer, which was found unconstitutional in 1962.
"Our schools have become veritable war zones and playgrounds for immorality," he said. "If we disregard prayer, will our city follow the same fate?" The crowd applauded heartily. When another speaker recalled the Lodi that once was as "a town that honored God so well everything was locked down from Friday night till Monday morning," an "Amen!" rang out.
A city of about 61,000, Lodi is the commercial center of a huge vineyard industry south of Sacramento. It has a substantial number of Sikhs and Muslims, but only one or two non-Christians have delivered invocations at its City Council meetings in the last decade, according to city officials.
Public prayer has been a battlefield for years. In Central California, the fight has been revived in a flurry of letters from a Wisconsin-based group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
"It was just our summer for Jesus prayers," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, one of the organization's founders. "The more action you do on it, the more you hear from people across the country who are concerned."
