The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is raising what it calls "constitutional concerns" after the Department of Labor's invitation to all employees to attend an official "Secretary's Prayer Service" scheduled for December 10th.
In a letter sent to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, FFRF has warned that hosting a government-sponsored prayer event crosses clear constitutional lines and improperly mixes official authority with personal religious promotion.
Jordan Lorence, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, says that the Labor Department has done nothing wrong.
"By just having voluntary types of situations where there is a prayer meeting and people come of their own free will — the government has been doing that since the earliest says of the republic, and that is not viewed as violating the Establishment Clause," Lorence tells AFN.
He says that the letter sent by the FFRF quotes the Supreme Court.
"A case where they're talking about whether people are offended or whether they would view the event as treating them as outsiders who are not participants in the political community,” informs Lorence, “but you can have meetings that have no religion at all that can make people feel like outsiders and not part of the political community. So, I think that that kind of argument proves too much."
Robert Muise, co-founder and senior counsel of American Freedom Law Center, also had no objections to the Secretary's Prayer Service.
"I always refer to George Washington's farewell address where he said religion and morality are the indispensable supports to our political success, and that's so true," says Muise.
As much as there is fighting amongst political parties, Muise says that, at the end of the day, the problems that we are going to be facing as a nation are because of our lack of morality and our lack of religion.
"So, organizations like FFRF who want to remove anything related to religion from the public square, they're doing incredible harm," states Muise. "It's interesting they sent a letter instead of a lawsuit because I think they know the cases they cited in there no longer carry the weight that they used to carry."
As for Lorence, he thinks "these kinds of events could unite people." He added that President Franklin Roosevelt led the nation in prayer when allied troops invaded Normandy Beach in June 1944.
