Sentence examples for sectarian prayer from inspiring English sources

Weicker's leadership on chuch-state separation includes blocking a bid by President Ronald Reagan in 1982 to amend the U.S Constitution to allow orchestrated sectarian prayer in public school classrooms and his refusal in 1993 to grant a state declaration for a Day of Prayer.

LAYCOCK: We're saying you cannot have sectarian prayer.

Yet with ever-increasing shrillness, we hear from elected or appointed officials that it's religious persecution to ask them to suspend sectarian prayer or practices on the bench, in the legislature or at the schoolhouse gate.

The Defense Department, the main military chaplains association and a variety of ecumenical groups have spoken against the provision, saying that sectarian prayer would create division within the military.

Religious leaders were quick to weigh in, with some expressing their dismay at a decision which allowed sectarian prayer in a public forum.

We are extremely disappointed that the Court chose to ignore the very blatant burden sectarian prayer imposes on the conscience of citizens with diverse religious beliefs and those without religious beliefs.

She voted to allow people to challenge a Bush administration program that gave taxpayer money to religious groups and the Indiana House of Representatives' practice of opening sessions with sectarian prayers.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 — A bill that sets the Pentagon's spending levels is being held up by controversy over a provision that would allow military chaplains to offer sectarian prayers at nondenominational military events.

So, non-sectarian prayers somehow establish an official religion, but sectarian prayers don't?

Here the town meetings involve participation by ordinary citizens with sectarian prayers directed to them.

Today, a narrowly divided Supreme Court upheld the practice of sectarian prayers before local council meetings in the town of Greece, New York.