Ontario town council drops Lord’s Prayer after secularist pressure
Image via WikipediaA town council in rural Ontario has been ordered by the court to cease opening meetings with the Lord’s Prayer after complaints from secularists, reports Bancroft This Week.
The council of the Municipality of Hastings Highlands had replaced the Christian prayer in April with a more generic one, comparable to that used in Ottawa’s Parliament, after a secularist in the community threatened a lawsuit.
Dagmar Gontard, a member of a group called Quinte Humanist, had made an appeal to the council in early 2011, arguing that the prayer is not inclusive and represents an intrusion of the Church into the affairs of the state.
While at that time the council unanimously agreed to continue saying the Lord’s Prayer, allowing attendees the option of not participating, they backed down in April after the complainant issued a legal threat.
The council received the court order on May 31st, despite having already ceased offering the Lord’s Prayer.
The pressure on the town council comes as part of a campaign by the lobby group Secular Ontario, which has targeted towns across the province over the use of the Lord’s Prayer, threatening legal action and complaints to the provincial government.
In particular, they have touted the 1999 Ontario Court of Appeal ruling Freitag v. Penetanguishene, which ruled that reciting the Lord’s Prayer at council meetings violates the freedoms of conscience and religion under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
At the same time, the use of prayers to “Almighty God” without specific Christian references was upheld by the Ontario Superior Court in 2004 in the case of Allen v. Renfrew.
