Tradition of prayer challenged

For 40 years, Lowell City Council members have begun meetings by bowing heads, clasping hands, and reciting the Lord's Prayer, a tradition born of the Roman Catholic beliefs shared by the city's oldest families.

"It is a beautiful prayer, " said Councilor Edward "Bud" Caulfield as he broke into a partial recitation of the supplication shortly before the start of council meeting last week.

But tradition, some say, must give way for the new demographic reality of Lowell, where the number of Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims is growing rapidly.

An interfaith group of religious leaders is pressing the city to make the Lord's Prayer one of five prayers recited before meetings, each representing one of world's major religions -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The prayers would be recited on a rotating basis.

"To baptize the Lord's Prayer as the exclusive approach seems like we're saying, 'You're not a part of the community here,' " said Steve Fisher, president of the Greater Lowell Interfaith Leadership Alliance and a former United Church of Christ minister.

The request has been met with resistance from some council members, who say they are not willing to tamper with a tradition that dates to 1966.

"I am not about to be bowing down and taking and eliminating that which should be there," said Councilor Rita Mercier , a Lowell native with Polish and Irish roots. "They call us a melting pot. But if you melt something, you lose its identity."

Echoing a concern shared by other councilors, Mercier added that once four additional prayers are added, other religious groups could come forward and demand recitation of their prayers, creating an alphabet soup of prayers at council meetings.

"How far do we go with this?" asked Mercier, a former mayor.

The matter, first broached with the council in August, has been referred to a council subcommittee of three members, including Mercier. The subcommittee is expected to report its recommendation to the nine-member council by the end of December. The subcommittee is scheduled to discuss the matter Tuesday .

Meanwhile, Mayor William F. Martin Jr. said that a compromise is being floated that would permit the recitation of the Lord's Prayer at the start of meetings, and prayers from other religions on a rotating basis at the end.

"Everyone is being careful and trying to do the right thing," Martin said.

Christine O'Connor , the city solicitor, said the matter is under review by her office, but she noted that Congress opens its session with a prayer led by a chaplain.

"Legislative bodies traditionally have the right to engage is some form of prayer," she said.

Legal experts said that Lowell went further than Congress because it uses an explicitly sectarian prayer. The US Supreme Court has ruled that legislative bodies may recite nonsectarian prayers, particularly if they have been doing so for a long time, said constitutional law professor Jessica Silbey of Suffolk University Law School.

Lowell's choice to use a Christian prayer, she said, presented an appearance of endorsing one religion, and adding more sectarian prayers to the mix "doesn't neutralize the problem. Inevitably there are religions left out, and you have the Lord's Prayer being said first."

The push for the change comes as Lowell's demographics have morphed dramatically since the council began reciting the Lord's Prayer. Through the late 20th century, Lowell was a heavily Catholic city, with large concentrations of Irish, French Canadians, Polish and Portuguese.

There were Greeks and Jews, as well. But Catholicism dominated, said Martha Mayo , director of the Center for Lowell History. She said that in the 1960s, with the relaxation of national immigration policies, new ethnic and religious groups began arriving. The number of Asians, particularly Cambodians, many of them Buddhists, began rising dramatically in the 1980s.

Asians made up less than 1 percent of Lowell's population in 1980, when whites were 96 percent of the population. In the 2000 Census, the percentage of Asians jumped to 17 percent, while whites made up 69 percent of the city's 105,000 residents . (Blacks were 4.2 percent, Hispanics 14 percent.)

But Asian-Americans, along with other new groups, have been slow to successfully flex their political muscle. The City Council's current members are all Roman Catholic. The first Cambodian and Buddhist elected to the body in 1999, Chanrithy "Rithy" Uong , served nearly five years before stepping down in 2005 following an ethics investigation.

Indeed, Cambodians have been largely mum about the push to change the prayer. Vong Ros , director of the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association in Lowell, attributed the reticence to culture.

"Cambodians respect traditions," he said. "The Constitution might set out to make sure that all religions and people are represented, but people in our community have not felt that the prayer has been a disrespect to their beliefs."

The interfaith group acknowledges that it consists largely of Christians agitating for change. But they say they are seeking to increase their diversity. At their last meeting, Fisher said, a Hindu attended.

One group jumping on the bandwagon, but at odds with the interfaith group, is atheists, who say that any prayer before council meetings is inappropriate.

Steve Berthiaume , director of the Atheists of Greater Lowell, said, "There's no reason for the City Council to be talking spirits on city time."

Berthiaume, a resident of Tyngsborough, said he has been urging members of his organization who live in Lowell to challenge the use of prayer, but that they have been reluctant to step forward because they fear being stigmatized.

Caulfield, the city councilor, said atheists wouldn't get far with their concerns.

"This is America, where we have freedom of speech. Everyone has their rights, and I suppose the atheists have theirs," he said. "But so do I."