Christian conservatives are condemning New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to bar clergy-led prayer at Sunday’s 10th anniversary commemoration of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, calling the program an insult. Bloomberg has defended his decision, saying it would be impossible to include everyone who would like to participate. The mayor’s staff also said the annual event is meant to focus on the victims’ families and has never included clergy invocations.
Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center who researches religious liberty, said he worries that Bloomberg might have jettisoned clergy prayer to avoid any controversy about Islam, since he would have to include a Muslim representative in the program. Haynes and others insist they would welcome a Muslim prayer leader to the group, along with a Catholic priest, a Protestant minister and a Jewish rabbi. But with increasingly vocal activists who condemn Islam as a violent religion, Haynes said Bloomberg was in a “a no-win situation.”
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