Would Jesus Pray at City Council?

The more that I think about the recent Supreme Court ruling defending the use of explicitly Christian prayer to open government meetings, the more it offends me. I have no problem praying in public. I do it all the time walking on the sidewalk mumbling the Jesus Prayer to myself with my prayer beads. When somebody else needs prayer, I don’t have any problem laying hands on them in the middle of a Walmart or any other public space. I don’t want to be the pastor who says, “I’ll pray for you” in the disingenuous way that we say “Let’s do lunch sometime” instead of actually praying for people right then and there. But prayer as a pro forma function of “civic religion” really bugs me. And Jesus himself had something to say about it in the sermon that is more widely ignored by supposedly “Biblical” American Christians than any other Biblical text.