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"Just a Little Talk with Jesus"
"Just a Little Talk with Jesus"
Legislature to fight to pray to Jesus
BY EDDIE BAEB
BLOOMBERG NEWS
December 15, 2005
INDIANAPOLIS -- A federal judge's order that the Indiana Legislature stop using the name Jesus Christ in its 188-year practice of holding an opening prayer has sparked protests from residents, politicians and clergy.
Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma said Wednesday that he will appeal the ruling, which an Indianapolis Star newspaper editorial criticized as "terribly intolerant."
Some pastors are refusing to lead invocation prayers to a generic God in the legislature, where lawmakers moved to amend the Indiana Constitution this year to prohibit same-sex marriage and may debate next year whether schools must teach so-called intelligent design as an alternative theory to evolution.
"The forces that want to take religious faith out of our government and our society are nibbling away at our liberty," Bosma, a Republican, said of the Nov. 30 ruling by U.S. District Judge David Hamilton in Indianapolis. "They got a big bite with this one. We have done nothing different here than what's happened for 188 years."
Hamilton ordered Bosma as speaker to instruct leaders of the invocation prayer to use nonsectarian words and refrain from using Jesus' name, title or other denominational appeal. Bosma is seeking to have the order suspended, saying it gives the legislature no clear standard for application.
Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels said of the ruling: "It's regrettable."
The criticism crosses party lines. House Minority Leader Patrick Bauer, 61, a Democrat from South Bend who preceded Bosma as speaker, has said he supports an appeal.
June Adams, 80, a retiree from Williamsburg, 75 miles east of Indianapolis, the state capital, said, "Our government was founded on freedom of religion, not freedom from religion."
The Indiana Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit May 31 on behalf of four state residents.
The group's legal director, Kenneth Falk, says the lawsuit stemmed from Clarence Brown, a Baptist church elder, singing "Just a Little Talk with Jesus" after his invocation in the state legislature on April 5.