This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Smyrna City Hall meeting prayer: Include invocations from rabbis, show diversity

It is not appropriate for the invocation to city hall meetings to always be a Christian-led prayer. Let's start showing diversity in Smyrna by inviting other religions to lead the prayer.

I have no religion but believe in a universal consciousness. What Christians and Jews call God. However, I believe God is everything, and inside all of us. Kind of like the bible says God is "all around us" but this isn't taking it far enough, or was a poor transcription by the original scribes. Enough about me.

I am offended by Smyrna's invocation including priests giving prayers, not because I am against God, but because I think it is horrible that we are not favoring diversity. Instead, Smyrna is shoving Christianity down peoples' throats by having only Christian-led invocations to city hall meetings. I personally believe that religion causes a lot of division and harm, whereas spirituality need no religion. However, people have a right to practice their religion.

Instead of pushing for NO Christian prayer during the invocation which I think people will feel is taking too much away, I am going to argue for the next best thing: That the invocation be given by more religions.

Find out what's happening in Smyrna-Viningswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

We have more than just Christians and Jews in Smyrna. We have Hindus, and we have Buddhists, we have new age spiritualists, and many others. However, to ease into things, I will suggest a first step I think most people can handle: Every other invocation be by a Jewish rabbi, and the prayer be in English, not Hebrew, but be a Jewish prayer.

I think once people get past this, people should start to invite other relgions to lead the prayer, but at least Judaism is a start.

Find out what's happening in Smyrna-Viningswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Let's start showing diversity in Smyrna, and show we're a 21st century city!

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Smyrna-Vinings