Unnecessary prayer?

The Freedom From Religion Foundation had a message for Newport News City Council: Stop praying.

FFRF sent a letter July 15 to the council protesting an invocation led by local clergy at the beginning of each meeting, the Daily Press first reported.

"We understand that these prayers often invoke Jesus Christ, ending frequently, 'in Jesus' name,'" FFRF staff attorney Patrick Elliott wrote, saying such prayers are "unnecessary, inappropriate and divisive."

"We'd hope that they didn't have a prayer at all," Elliott told the Daily Press, but said that if the council still decides to keep the prayers, it should require them to be non-denominational.

Currently, Newport News already sends guidelines to pastors interested in giving the prayers that ask them to avoid "languages or images connected to any... particular faith or religion." Yet the FFRF letter cited prayers from council meetings on May 10 and April 26 and said it was responding to a complaint from someone who attends the meetings.

"When I pray as a Christian, I pray in the name of Jesus," Rev. Dale Seley told the Daily Press. Saley is the senior pastor at First Baptist Church and has given the invocation at council meetings. "For you to ask me not to do that is to ask me not to be a Christian, to take part of my faith and put it aside."

A number of other Hampton Roads councils and boards have struggled with what to do about prayer. For the Isle of Wight County school board, prayers were replaced with a moment of silence. York County and Hampton both have prayers before meetings, but James City County Board of Supervisors had so much division when it considered adding prayers in 2001 that members compromised and agreed to a moment of silence.

Newport News Mayor McKinley Price told the Daily Press that he hopes the prayers will continue.

"God is in my life every day," Price said. "Personally, I see it as a necessity."

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