TRI In The News

Public Prayer Placates Peeved Pious Pugh

July 28, 2011

7/28/2011

TRI IN THE NEWS: PUBLIC PRAYER PLACATES PEEVED PIOUS PUGH

From The Rhino Times

On Thursday, June 21, after a four-year fight, but after the actual shooting had stopped, High Point City Councilmember Mike Pugh finally got to say "Jesus" from the dais at a City Council meeting.

Pugh, the City Council's resident contrarian, in 2006 led a nationally covered fight over the City Council's policy on prayer at council meetings. Pugh, unlike the other councilmembers, wanted the City Council to allow specifically Christian prayers in its invocations, and lost, by a 1-to-8 vote, an attempt to kill a proposed City Council resolution forbidding them during the invocations.

Since then, Pugh has been a voice crying in the wilderness and, at his request, has, alone of all the councilmembers, never been asked to perform the invocation.

The prayer-at-meetings dispute turned into open war on July 16, 2007, when, after what Councilmember Latimer Alexander described as "robo-calls" to City Attorney Fred Baggett on the issue, the City Council, by the 8-to-1 vote, approved a resolution proposed by Alexander that called on councilmembers to avoid religiously specific prayer because of a series of court cases forbidding it as a violation of the establishment clause in the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Alexander's resolution acknowledged that the prayers in City Council meetings were the face of the High Point city government, rather than private prayers, and should reflect different religious viewpoints.

That was unlikely to happen in High Point, where letters to the editor focus more on theological issues than political ones, and where all the councilmembers are at least nominally Christian. The dispute energized and fascinated High Pointers, and on the day that the dueling resolutions were offered, according to the meeting minutes, "There was standing room only in the Council Chambers" – a rarity at the City Council's brief, untelevised meetings.

Pugh made a substitute motion to approve a resolution that cited an alternate series of cases, attempted to define councilmembers' prayers during invocations as private speech, rather than the voice of the board, and provided for councilmembers to perform the invocation on a rotating basis. Pugh's motion died for lack of a second, something he has resented ever since.

The majority's resolution stated, "The High Point City Council will continue to have an invocational prayer to seek divine guidance on the deliberations and work of the Council, and to solemnify the opening of its meetings at which work for the benefit of the public is conducted."

And so the City Council has done so during the four years since the great prayer war of 2007. One of the councilmembers, usually Mayor Becky Smothers but sometimes others she has called on, has prayed from the dais at the beginning of each City Council meeting. Most of the prayers address God or "our heavenly father," and are Christian in every sense but actually saying "Jesus."

Yet for four years, Pugh has glowered at the other councilmembers from the left side of the dais, and his resentment against the majority of the City Council has made his relations with them contentious and often rocky. Despite being on different sides of the issue, Pugh and Alexander both took the unusual step of telling Smothers not to call on them to perform invocations, saying they wouldn't be told how to pray.

"Mike told me that back when we had the great discussion about how we were going to pray," Smothers said. "He told me not to call on him. The same with Latimer. I haven't called on either of them."

Pugh has also told Smothers not to bother appointing him to any of the City Council's committees, in which most of its work is done, and has not been a voting member of a committee.

Last week, the City Council held one of its rare Thursday morning meetings. The City Council schedules a meeting for every Thursday, but usually makes all action final at its Monday meeting and gets Thursday to sleep in.

Smothers was on vacation, so Mayor Pro Tem Alexander chaired both the Monday and Thursday meetings, and Alexander, having taken himself off the prayer list and, as he tells it, wanting to spread the opportunity to pray to other councilmembers, asked Councilmember Bernita Sims to perform the invocation on Monday. No surprise there.

But on Thursday, Alexander, against all expectations, called on Pugh. Alexander later said he did so only to offer an olive branch to Pugh.

"That was a lot of the intent of asking Mike to do that," Alexander said later. "I know how important it is to Mike. He and I are many times on the opposite sides of the fence on issues. But that doesn't mean I don't respect him. It was, on my side, a sign of respect. It's hard a lot of times. Each one of us is passionate about the positions we take. We try never to make it personal. Sometimes it can get personal and sometimes it can feel personal. But it should be about the issues."

Pugh responded to Alexander's call with the following prayer:

"We thank you for the many blessings, Lord. We pray for wisdom and knowledge to conduct the business of the people. Lord, we know there's many people suffering in this world and Lord, we pray for those, but we thank you for our blessings and Lord we pray for those that are less fortunate and we just ask thy blessings upon this assembly. In the name of my Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen."

The sudden deviation from the City Council's policy, or at least practice, was surprising to at least some of the small handful of people that turned up for the 9 a.m. City Council meeting.

Pugh said he took Alexander's gesture as intended, and that it offset much of the years of tension between himself and Alexander and himself and the rest of the City Council.

"I had not asked directly to do it, so I was shocked that I was asked," Pugh said. "Nevertheless I was very grateful, because I think everyone should have the right to exercise their faith according to the dictates of their own heart. I appreciate it, and I will be very interested to see if this policy goes on."

Even in recent months, Pugh has repeated his threat to sue the city over the prayer issue, and has corresponded with national groups that would support a lawsuit.

Pugh said he voluntarily asked Smothers to exclude him from performing the invocation, and Pugh and Alexander confirmed the statement. Pugh had previously said that he was being involuntarily excluded from doing so, and the most recent letter threatening to sue the city, written at Pugh's request by Rita M. Dunaway of The Rutherford Institute of Charlottesville, Virginia, on Dec. 16, 2010, repeated the accusation.

Dunaway, after questioning the City Council's argument that the invocations were government speech, wrote, "We believe that your Resolution suffers from flawed legal reasoning and that your application of the Resolution to systematically exclude Mr. Pugh from offering an invocation because of his religious beliefs is unconstitutionally discriminatory." That phrasing suggests that Pugh had told the Rutherford Institute he was being involuntarily excluded from the invocations.

Pugh said he did not know if his being given the chance to give the invocation was related to the lawsuit.

"I don't know," Pugh said. "I would hate to speculate. He could have been doing it for many reasons. He could have been doing it because it was the right thing to do. That's what I would like to believe. It could have been done for a political or legal reason, but I would like to believe not."

For all the gestures of goodwill between Alexander and Pugh, the threat of lawsuits still hangs over the City Council. And although Pugh giving the invocation lessens the likelihood of a lawsuit by Pugh and his allies, it increases the likelihood of a lawsuit by those who consider his specifically Christian prayer a violation of the Establishment Clause.

Alexander said he thought that no one in the chamber objected to the prayer.

"If someone came up to me and said they felt uncomfortable and felt their rights were violated, I wouldn't do it again," Alexander said. "But it is a genuine issue on Mike's part. It's not contrived. And when it came in my power to do that, I did that. Now they may not let me be mayor pro tem again. But it was something I felt Mike deserved."

Pugh, despite getting a place in the invocation batting order, didn't rule out legal action against the city.

"There are some lawsuits pending over it," he said. "If this causes any turmoil, then my attorneys will certainly step in and defend the way I pray."