Lord’s Prayer likely off local council’s agenda

By Renée Rodgers

First it was taken out of schools. Now the Lord’s Prayer will likely be taken out of Hastings County council meetings as well.

While a proposal to do away with the prayer has been referred to the finance committee for consideration, Warden Jo-Anne Albert said she doesn’t see the committee barring the decision.

“I would think it would be definitely out,” she said in an interview.

Council saw two presentations at a Sept. 29 meeting, both aimed to convince members to do away with the Lord’s Prayer.

William King, a lawyer with an office in Belleville, explained to council the legal ramifications of continuing to say the prayer. Ontario’s highest court ruled in 1999 that reciting the prayer during municipal council meetings violates the country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Secularist Dagmar Gontard-Zelinkova, a resident of Highland Hills, also made a presentation during the meeting, urging council to get rid of the prayer.

The prayer, she said, “is clearly exclusive as it discriminates against those citizens who do not believe in the Christian religion and also all those who do not believe in any supernatural power.”

While the presentations were effective, Albert said they actually had little to do with council considering removal of the prayer from meetings. Rather, it was something the council had been discussing for a number of months.

While Hastings County Council is poised to do away with the Lord’s Prayer, Prince Edward County Council is not considering removing the prayer from its meetings’ agendas.

That council voted seven to six earlier this year in favour of keeping the Lord’s Prayer on the agenda of its meetings. PEC Mayor Peter Mertens said in a recent interview he wasn’t aware there were any legal consequences to saying the prayer during meetings.

“I’ve heard nothing to the contrary from any source that would suggest we shouldn’t be doing it so barring additional information from either our legal people or some other source, I don’t think that we’re going to revisit it,” he said.

John Williams, mayor of Quinte West, said his council doesn’t say the Lord’s Prayer, but they do say a ‘prayer’ of sorts to begin their meetings.

“It’s not, I would say, really directed at a religious theme, he said. “It’s just that we’re respectful and make decisions that benefit everybody, that type of thing. So there’s nothing there that’s specific.”

Williams said Quinte West Council has never heard any complaints about the prayer, and has no plans to stop saying it.