While siding with James Madison that it is important to draw a line of distinction between religion and the civil authorities (often called "separation of church and state," I am among those who would not make an absolutely tidy solution to issues connected with it. That is, to promote NEW activities which gives legal support to worship activities in public places and on public occasions, it seems to many of us that time-honored customs, so deeply ingrained in culture and custom that few notice them, can be allowed to survive.

The cost of purging the public sphere of all historic traces is probably higher than the beneficial results of doing so might be. The "new" ones tend to be "in your face:" "we" and "our religion" belong, and "you and "yours" don't. So I'd fight about the appropriateness of "establishing" and paying for Senate chaplaincy some other day.

Would the case have come up had there not been Wiccan, or Hindu, or Muslim prayers? No doubt senate chaplaincy is debated from time to time, but when a non-Jew, non-Christian prays the debate takes on a different, more volatile character. It is hard to see on what grounds one can favor one group's prayers and exclude another's (all things being equal!) In a pluralistic society, prayers designed to favor and please one assertive and overly-defined constituency at the expanse of others seems manifestly unfair.

The cynic might say--and some mornings it is hard to wake up without carrying a bit of cynicism with one--that the prayers are all right because they don't mean anything anyhow. If particular, they are offensive; if general, they are still rooted in particular communities (e.g., Jewish, Chrsitian), but more likely are so bland and unnoticeable that they might well be thought of as praying directed "to whom it may concern."

Prayer means something, means more, when it grows out of the stories and devotion and practices of praying communities, nurtured in church and synagogue and mosque, than it does when everything is flattened out to appeal to a general public in a general way.