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Freedom from Religion Foundation says prayers at Ravenswood Council meetings stopped

RAVENSWOOD – An organization working to keep church and state separate said Ravenswood City Council will no longer deliver religious invocations at official meetings.

In a news release from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), the organization said it wrote a letter to Mayor Josh Miller after a concerned community member reported that at the Jan. 20 public meeting, Council Member Todd Ritchie began by leading a prayer.

According to the release, Miller asked all attendees to stand, then asked either for a moment of silence or for a member of the public to lead a prayer. Ritchie then gave a Christian prayer, directing it to the “Heavenly Father” and ending with “in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.” 

Because a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals precedent specifically weighed in against prayer led by local legislators, FFRF wrote a letter to the mayor asking that council-led prayers not become a practice at council meetings.

As a policy, FFRF opposes any governmental prayer as exclusionary and inappropriate, and no city or county governmental body is required to open meetings with a religious ritual the news release said.

“City Council members are free to pray privately or to worship on their own time in their own way,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Charlotte R. Gude said. “They do not need to worship on taxpayers’ time.” 

The foundation wrote that citizens, including Ravenswood’s nonreligious and minority faith citizens, may be compelled to come before the City Council on important civic matters and to participate in serious decisions affecting their livelihoods, property, children and quality of life. Exclusively Christian prayers marginalize community members belonging to the 34% of West Virginians who are non-Christians, including the nearly one in three adult residents of the state who are religiously unaffiliated, the group added.

“It is coercive, embarrassing and intimidating for nonreligious individuals and members of minority religions to be required to make a public showing of their non-belief (by not rising or praying) or else to display deference toward a religious sentiment in which they do not believe, but which their city council members clearly do,” the FFRF’s news release said. 

Miller is reported to have responded to the FFRF’s letter noting that the city has taken action to prevent further council-led prayers.

“Members of the council have been apprised of the law as a result of your correspondence and will no longer offer an invocation or prayer either prior to or during any council meeting,” Miller replied in an official letter, according to the news release.

Miller could not be reached for further comment Monday.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 41,000 members nationwide, including more than 100 members in West Virginia.

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