Christian Prayers Replaced By Quiet Moment

Country: United Kingdom

Date of incident: January 1, 2007


Totnes Town Council replaced Christian prayers at the start of its meeting with a moment of silence.

For hundreds of years, Totnes Town Council had started its monthly meetings with a Christian prayer, DailyMail reports. In January 2007, the practice has been replaced with ‘a quiet moment of reflection’ after councilors decided to "streamline" the way they run meetings, despite most of the council members being church-going Christians.

Mayor Pru Boswell was reported by the BBC as saying: ‘We are trying to reflect the different needs of different councilors. It is nothing to do with being politically correct,’ and added, ‘Some of them are religious and some of them are not.’

The only councilor against the decision was Geoff Date, a self-confessed atheist. He said, ‘At the beginning of each meeting we have a quiet prayer and the vicar usually reminds us why we are there and to do the best for the people. I think that's a good thing whether you are a Christian or a non-Christian,’ and he added, ‘We have been saying prayers for hundreds of years and it seems a shame to stop that tradition. We seem to be going down a politically correct line and I don't agree with it."

 

Sources and further information:

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/local.council.axes.christian.prayers.at.meetings/9076.htm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-427962/Council-axes-Christian-prayers-despite-having-minority-faiths.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/6249005.stm