Atheist to Open Town Meeting Following Supreme Court’s Public Prayer Ruling

The Supreme Court recently ruled that the town council of Greece, New York, could continue to open its meetings with a prayer—a tradition they’ve upheld since 1999. Now, a local atheist has been granted permission to deliver a “non-theist” invocation message to open a future meeting. Though other non-Christian prayers have opened the public meetings over the years, the overwhelming majority of invocations have been from Christians. In May, the Supreme Court ruled in a narrow 5-4 decision that public prayers would be allowed at the meetings because the opening message “does not coerce participation by nonadherents.” At the time of the court’s ruling, Greece’s board supervisor told CNN, “The faith of the prayer giver does not matter at all. We accept anyone who wants to come in and volunteer to give the prayer to open up our town meetings” …