Susan Galloway, who is Jewish, and Linda Stephens, an atheist, felt uncomfortable sitting through the predominately Christian prayers that opened every town meeting in Greece, New York. For years they lived through their discomfort. Then they asked that the town meetings start instead with non-sectarian prayers that did not explicitly reference specific religious ideas. Eventually, the town council told both women that they could stand in the hallway or stick their fingers in their ears.

Instead, they filed suit.

This week, the US supreme court ruled, 5-4, in favor of the town of Greece, and opened up a new battlefield in the culture wars. What Galloway and Stephens experienced will unfortunately continue to occur in many communities throughout the country – those who are part of a minority religious tradition in a particular locale should just "put up or shut up" and wait their turn.

The part of upstate New York in which Greece is situated was historically known as the "Burned-Over District" in the 19th century for speed with which residents accepted (and some times quickly rejected) a diversity of religions. That diversity, which included Mormons, Millerites, Spiritualists and Evangelicals in the 19th century, looks different in the 21st: according to a 2010 survey by the Association of Religious Data Archives, those who are unaffiliated with a religious tradition made up the largest group in the county – more than twice as many people claimed no religion as said they were Catholic.



The trend toward non-affiliation in upstate New York mirrors the rise in non-affiliated and non-religious people across the United States. According to the Pew Foundation, the number of people unaffiliated with a religious tradition is just under 20% in America, and on the rise.

Rulings like the latest big one from the Roberts court do not take into account the changing landscape of belief in America. And it will only intensify the clashes between those who want to invoke specific deities, and those who have amorphous or other religious beliefs – as if both of those groups weren't preparing for future battles over prayer already.



The supreme court has now allowed the majority religion of the members of a city government to dominate the sectarian prayers offered at its meetings. In many towns throughout the nation, of course, these councils are populated predominately by conservative Christians (especially in the midwest and southern states).

While the majority opinion in Greece v Galloway affirms that the prayers should be non-coercive (as in, the government cannot force its constituents to participate), it does leave room for a type of coercion: the choice by these councils or groups to only offer the ability to pray at meetings to particular religious leaders who conform to the religious views of the officials issuing the invites.

Interestingly enough, the split between justices on this case also fell across religious lines. The majority opinion came from all the Catholic members of the court, while the dissent came from the Jewish members of the court and Justice Sotomayor, who is a non-practicing Catholic. Like the citizens on whose behalf they have been appointed to rule, even members of the supreme court have different ideas about prayer and the role it plays in public life.



Justice Kennedy stated in the majority decision that "an insistence on non-sectarian or ecumenical prayer as a single fixed standard is not consistent with the tradition of legislative prayer outlined in the Court's cases," which implies that any court ruling forcing governments to respect its citizens' lack of or differing beliefs actually infringed on the rights of believers.

All Galloway and Stephens wanted was to have prayers that were non-sectarian – that did not refer to particular deities. What they got, in addition to hate mail and ridicule, was a supreme court that sided with a government entity's right to not take into account the religious beliefs (or lack thereof) espoused by the people it serves. Given the trend of Americans moving away from religion, that should bother everyone who has strong religious beliefs at least much as those who don't.