Guest post by Mark Silk, who is filling in for Steven Waldman.
Dan Gilgoff, who used to run the God-o-Meter hereabouts and now blogs at God and Country for U.S. News, reported last month that President Obama, in a departure from past presidential practice, was opening his town hall-type meetings around the country with, as Dan puts it, “White-House-commissioned and vetted prayers.” That is to say, the White House invites particular clergy to give the invocation, and then reviews the proposed invocations to make sure that they are sufficiently inclusive. Praying in the name of Jesus, as Rick Warren did in his inaugural invocation, is apparently a no-no. On the president’s current visit to California, this invocation arrangement applies.
The practice has drawn some criticism, less for the having of prayers than for the vetting of them. That, it seems to me, gets it backward.

In this day and age, when (as the president himself noted in his inaugural address) we recognize the substantial presence of Americans “of no faith,” invoking God at a government event cannot be fully inclusive. However, such invocation is a customary way of beginning public meetings, and, according to the Supreme Court’s decision 1983 decision in Marsh v. Chambers, is constitutional as well. The question is, why shouldn’t the government body arranging the prayer be able to make sure that it is sufficiently inclusive?
It impinges on no clergy’s religious freedom to be asked to pray inclusively or not at all. If an invitee feels she has to pray in Jesus’ name, she can simply decline the invitation. You’re free not to like exercises in what former Yale Law School dean Eugene Rostow termed “ceremonial deism,” but sacralizing a public event as we often do in America does not mean having to let people witness for whatever specific faith they wish. Obama is making a push for the old-time civil religion. It will be interesting to see how willing his evangelical friends are to go along.