The Trials and Tribulations of Hashmel Turner

He shakes his head as he relives the memory of that revival: its welcoming warmth, the singing and preaching, and, most amazingly for a young black man in a segregated town, the sight of black and white people praying together, for one another. That night didn't bring fireworks; it felt more like a calmness coming over Turner when he agreed to accept Jesus Christ as his savior. He says he simply understood that he was going to be okay. He was going to finish high school. He was going to make his mother proud. And he was going to give his life to Christ.

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In the four decades that followed -- years spent driving a truck to support his wife, daughter and youngest brother, serving as a church deacon, preaching sermons and finally becoming an ordained Baptist minister -- Turner often asked himself why Jesus had saved him and whether he was doing what Jesus wanted. When he got involved in combating crime in his neighborhood and decided to run for a seat on the Fredericksburg City Council in 2002, part of the answer became clear.

A few months after Turner took office, the prayer rotation came to him for the first time. "All wise and all merciful God, our dear heavenly Father," began his request on August 13, 2002, seeking holy guidance to "cleanse our hearts and our minds . . . to make the right decisions." He mentioned the looming war in Iraq and the "turbulent times," and asked for prayers for state, national and world leaders. "We realize that it is all in your care," Turner said before ending his prayer: "In Jesus's holy name. Amen."

Shortly after, a woman in Turner's district contacted him to say his explicit reference to Jesus Christ had offended her. He was shocked, having never been exposed to the viewpoint "that just mentioning the name of Jesus Christ would offend someone," he says, then stops and chuckles softly. "I'm just a country boy."

Turner wasn't likely the first person to bring Jesus Christ into the City Council chambers. When the city created opening prayers in the early 1950s -- city records don't say why -- clergy delivered them. In the late 1950s, council members took over and have been delivering them ever since. Longtime city employees agree that, over the course of 50 years, others have prayed in the name of Jesus without provoking an objection. "The world used to be a much kinder, gentler bunch," says Debbie Naggs, who recently retired after 22 years as clerk for the council.

Turner's first reaction to the complaint was to take himself out of the prayer rotation. Turner is by nature self-effacing. He is often silent during council meetings, and, even in his church, he's happy to turn a service or Bible study over to a deacon or assistant pastor. Until his public prayers were called into question, he hadn't given much thought to religious freedom issues. He had never attended Religious Freedom Day, an annual celebration in Fredericksburg that marks a significant chapter in the city's history.

In 1777, a committee that included Thomas Jefferson met in Fredericksburg to revise Virginia's laws as the colony prepared to become a state in a new nation. At the time, the Anglican Church was officially recognized by Virginia as the established church -- a preference that Jefferson vigorously rejected. He drafted a "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom," proposing that "no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."

Jefferson's bill later became one of the tenets of the First Amendment, which established the landmark protection of religious freedom: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ."

For 10 months, Turner didn't pray at council meetings. He decided he'd rather take a pass than alter the dialogue he had with God. Or, as his wife, Alice, puts it, "If you don't pray to Jesus, you're just praying to air."

But by spring 2003, his conscience was gnawing at him, and he put himself back in. "In the name of Jesus Christ, we thank you for what you are going to do. Amen," he prayed before the council meeting on July 23, 2003. Five days later, a letter from Kent Willis at the Virginia ACLU arrived. He'd received a complaint from the same woman who'd been in contact with Turner.

Willis, who lives in Fredericksburg, told Turner that he'd voted for him, but that Turner needed to alter the wording of his prayers. "To be blunt, opening a city council meeting with a sectarian prayer is not permitted under the constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state," Willis wrote. While Turner had the same right as any other American to express his religious beliefs, Willis said, an invocation by a government official for a government meeting is essentially government speech. "It must therefore be undertaken in the most inclusive and neutral manner to make absolutely certain that it is devoid of any hint of religious preference . . . when you offer an invocation that references only the Christian faith, the message to non-Christians is that they are interlopers, whether or not that is your intention."

Willis requested an assurance from Turner that he would stop praying in Jesus's name. "I thank you for your attention," the letter ended.

After reading the letter, the minister was torn. He didn't want to burden the city with a legal problem if the ACLU sued. But he also had the growing sense that God had selected him for an important mission. The more he thought about it, the more he believed that America was testing God's patience. He could see it in his own community. At the Fredericksburg schools Turner once attended, the students were dressing immodestly, speaking rudely and being consumed by a self-centered culture.

"It seems like the demonic side, the dark side is targeting our youth," he explains one Sunday after church, his voice the only sound in an empty community room. And teachers' hands are tied, he says. They can't dole out discipline as they see fit. As Turner talks, he keeps shaking his head from side to side, letting loose a vexed "Mmmm" every minute or so that seems to come from deep within. He is a worried man. He worries about war, rising violence "and all kinds of sinful things taking place." Sure, he lived through bad times: segregation, bomb shelters, the Vietnam War. But something was different. "Before, it seems like things came from somewhere outside. Now it seems like America is eroding from within."

America, he says, was founded on "God-fearingness. Our fore-fathers set us up based on Christian values and belief. And you can research that. It's there." And moving away from God would be no joke. "Rome and other empires, they just became so disobedient, and the wrath of God fell upon them, and they exist no more. And if America goes down that road . . ." Turner frowns, his forehead tightens. He lets loose a sharp "Mmmm!"

"We could be close to the time when God says: 'Enough is enough. If you don't want me in America, then I don't have a desire to protect America any longer. If you don't want me, I'm gone.'" And what if he could do something to affect that, he thought as he considered whether to take legal action. Could Jesus have brought him, an ordinary believer, into this legislative prayer confrontation to carry out an extraordinary task?

Most of Turner's colleagues on the City Council sympathized with his desire to include Jesus in his prayer. Girvan said demanding that council members stick to generic prayers "homogenized" them. Tomzak said prayers on behalf of the city -- no matter who they are from or in whose name they are made -- should be welcome. Council member Kerry Devine, however, wasn't sure how appropriate prayer was for the council chamber. "I don't look at myself or the council as a spiritual body," she was quoted as saying in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star newspaper. "Governing body, yes. Spiritual body, no."

To avoid a lawsuit by the ACLU, City Attorney Kathleen Dooley recommended on November 8, 2005, that the council formally ban the invocation of a specific deity. "At this time, there is no clear legal authority to permit a denominational prayer -- one invoking Jesus Christ, for example -- as part of the official meeting," she wrote in a memo to the council.

Council member Billy Withers made a motion to pass the ban. It was seconded. Is there any further discussion, the mayor asked?

I'm recusing myself from voting, Turner said softly, since this is "pretty much directly" aimed at him.

Council member Matthew Kelly was skeptical of the measure. "I have followed the rules on this and will continue to do so when I have the prayer duty. But, you know, no one has yet explained to me why somebody who believes as they do and asks that [an] individual -- whomever it may be -- bless the entire city -- why that is a bad thing?" I'm voting against it for philosophical reasons, Kelly said, but I'll follow it once it passes.

Then Withers spoke up. I have a problem with it, too, he said, but not enough of one to get us into a lawsuit "that we just don't need to be in."

Turner offered a short defense of his actions in a low, deep voice. "Yes, Mr. Mayor, to try to clear it up, I'm just referring back to my free speech rights." No one responded. A minute later, Tomzak asked council members to cast their votes. The measure passed with five yeas, one nay from Kelly and one abstention from Turner.

Two months later, Turner filed suit against the City of Fredericksburg in federal court in Richmond. The lawsuit accused Tomzak and the City Council of violating Turner's right to free speech, infringing on his religious beliefs and imposing "viewpoint discrimination" on him. The city must be banned from enforcing its policy, it said, and Turner must be allowed to pray freely before meetings.

The city had hoped to avoid a lawsuit from one side, and now was facing one from the other direction. But the legal battle hasn't become a drain on Fredericksburg's coffers. Another national advocacy group, People for the American Way, is providing free legal services for the city's defense. With money removed as a factor, most City Council members appear to personally support Turner's position. Many city residents seem to be behind Turner, too. "Whenever we go anywhere together, people always come up to him and say how happy they are that someone is taking a stand," says Tomzak. "And they look at me like I'm some sort of fascist."

EVEN AS TURNER IS BANNED FROM SAYING JESUS CHRIST'S NAME AT CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS, in Richmond, 50 miles south, the state House and Senate have no such restrictions on clergy or lawmakers who offer opening prayers. "We let them know the Senate represents many denominations, but there are no restrictions," says Susan Clarke Schaar, longtime Senate clerk.

The same is true 50 miles north, in Congress, where U.S. House and Senate chaplains have been offering invocations since 1789. These days, most opening prayers in Congress are nonsectarian and given by an official chaplain because, as the House's Rev. Daniel Coughlin puts it: "I want to offer a prayer to which everyone can say amen." But there is no ban on sectarian prayers, and guest speakers sometimes offer them.

The fact that Congress allows an invocation in Jesus's name, but the Fredericksburg City Council cannot is attributable, in part, to the unusual history of legislative prayer. The nation's first Congress explicitly established legislative prayer by authorizing the appointment of paid chaplains on September 22, 1789, three days before its members agreed on the wording of the Bill of Rights.

"Clearly the men who wrote the First Amendment Religion Clauses did not view paid legislative chaplains and opening prayers as a violation of that Amendment," Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger noted in a pivotal legislative prayer case in 1983.

". . . The delegates did not consider opening prayers as a proselytizing activity or as symbolically placing the government's 'official seal of approval on one religious view.'"

Burger was writing for the majority in Marsh v. Chambers, which challenged the Nebraska legislature's century-old practice of hiring a chaplain as a violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause. It was not a violation, Burger wrote, because of America's unique history of legislative prayer and because in Nebraska "there is no indication that the prayer opportunity has been exploited to . . . advance any one . . . faith or belief." Footnotes in Burger's opinion observed that the Presbyterian chaplain in Lincoln at the time gave nonsectarian prayers and removed all references to Christ.

So, did the last significant Supreme Court ruling on legislative prayer allow sectarian prayer or ban it?

Arguments on each side of the debate tend toward the passionate, as if the U.S. Constitution or America's salvation -- or both -- are at stake. Municipal meetings all over the country have become a particular battleground, despite the fact that most people would rather mow their lawn than watch their local government in action.

In Great Falls, S.C., a Wiccan who sued the town in 2001 for offering only Christian prayers before meetings came home to find her pet parrot beheaded and a note: "You're next!" In Indiana, the ACLU sued in 2005 to stop sectarian prayer in the state legislature after a minister led the House in singing "Just a Little Talk With Jesus." In Southern California, 34 city attorneys unsuccessfully urged a state appeals court to allow sectarian prayers in a 2002 case involving the Burbank City Council.

The courts have responded to these lawsuits with rulings that seem contradictory. In 2004, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled in favor of the Wiccan in South Carolina. Just because brief religious invocations have been part of U.S. tradition, wrote Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, doesn't give a legislative body "license to advance its own religious views in preference to all others." The following year, another three-judge panel from the same appeals court ruled against a Wiccan priestess from suburban Richmond who wanted to be put on the list of clergy to give prayers before supervisors' meetings, saying that a range of other religions were already represented.

No case since Marsh has challenged the constitutionality of legislative prayer itself, only specific aspects of it. How diverse or ecumenical do the prayers have to be? What about in a community that is almost all Christian?

Separationist groups such as the ACLU say they get involved in the issue only if they get a complaint. "We're not the prayer police," says Willis. "We're not looking at every prayer. There are dozens of variations on government prayer which have not been litigated."

Turner says he had no choice but to pursue a lawsuit once the City Council passed a law directed at him. "If I want my prayer to be answered, I have to pray in the name of Jesus," he explains. "If I have freedom of religion, why is it that I, as a Christian, cannot pray in City Council as my convictions lead me?" He wouldn't argue with a council member who used the word "Allah, or Buddha, or whatever," he says. "Whomever is on the prayer roster, I have no argument. I'm not going to tell anyone else how to pray."

But in the six decades since Fredericksburg council meetings have been opened with a prayer, no officials can remember a prayer being offered by a non-Christian. How would Turner feel if the majority of the council were Muslim and most of the prayers were delivered in Allah's name? He pauses for a good 10 seconds. The first thing out of his mouth is John 14:6: I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. No one gets to God except by accepting Jesus Christ, he says. So what does it mean for someone who believes America desperately needs to be praying to say that God hears only Christian prayers? "This is personal, how I feel," Turner says. "How others accept that, that is truly up to them."

Last year, U.S. District Court Judge James R. Spencer tossed out Turner's lawsuit, ruling that legislative prayers are government speech and therefore cannot advocate Christianity or any other specific religion. Whitehead says he wasn't surprised or discouraged by the judge's decision. He and Turner are appealing the ruling to the 4th Circuit appeals court in Richmond -- the same court that issued contradictory decisions in the cases involving the Wiccans. Though it's been 14 months since Turner and Whitehead filed the appeal, the court has yet to ask for oral arguments or written briefs. Regardless of how the appeals court rules, Whitehead thinks the case could wind up before the Supreme Court. "This is a wide-open question, something the Supreme Court needs to decide."

Turner says he's not worried about the outcome of the court battle. "I believe God will have the last victory in this matter, so it doesn't matter to me so much what man has to say . . . I believe God is pleased by the fact that I am willing to stand up for Jesus."

IN FREDERICKSBURG, TURNER HAS BEEN INVITED TO GIVE INVOCATIONS ALL OVER TOWN: the Chamber of Commerce annual gala, an NAACP breakfast, veterans' gatherings. The local newspaper ran two supportive editorials, including one calling Turner a "prayer warrior." One letter to the editor cited a common sentiment: anger about Supreme Court decisions in the early 1960s that banned officially led Bible reading and prayer in school.

"We as a nation have gone downhill ever since," read the letter. "If we keep pandering to be 'politically correct' and don't stick up for what is correct and take up our cross, we are doomed as a nation and a people."

Others were less enamored of the pastor and his lawsuit.

"When Christians constituting a majority allege discrimination against themselves, it doesn't meet the dictionary definition," read another letter. "It's not belief-based exclusion to exclude Jesus prayers at public meetings, rather it incorporates the American spirit and practice of insulating minorities."

But listening to most people talk about Turner's case, the legal technicalities fade to the background and a constellation of other issues appears. The subject quickly shifts from religious expression to subjects such as war or the decline of the American family. The case becomes a proxy for whatever people find troubling in the world, a political Rorschach test.

Stew Engel, a 70-year-old retired software engineer who watches Fredericksburg council meetings on TV, finds the concept of all prayer at government meetings so annoying that he offered to serve as a plaintiff for the ACLU if it sued the city.

"I remember during World War II, people used to say, 'Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,' and I remember thinking, isn't it silly to ask for God's help in the war, and the other side is doing the same thing?" he says. "I don't like organized religion, when someone tells you what God wants."

For Mayor Tomzak, talk of Turner's case morphs quickly into a discussion of societal ills such as teen pregnancy and poverty. "We've got a lot of social problems," says Tomzak, an ob-gyn with the Rappahannock Area Health District, "and you can't do anything to modify behavior in the community because people think it's a right-wing conspiracy."

While he describes himself as something of a lapsed Catholic (who now prescribes birth control pills), Tomzak says religion in the schools and other public places used to teach values and consequences. "And when you removed that, it wasn't replaced with anything -- a moral structure. You use the word moral, and it's like using the word child molester or something."

Get Jim Pates, a longtime Fredericksburg city attorney, talking about the case, and suddenly you're in a conversation about judicial activism and the way the Supreme Court decided the 2000 presidential election. Pates, who grew up in Fredericksburg and represented the city when the Turner controversy began, thinks an opening prayer is inoffensive and the whole issue "ridiculous." However, he says, the idea of courts and laws being able to resolve this stuff is even crazier. "We do ourselves a great disservice by expecting the law to fix these things. That's why people hate lawyers and the law. We ask too much of it."

Barbara Turner, Hashmel's 55-year-old sister, thinks the case is about returning civility and kindness to a world that, in her view, can be harsh without God. Struggling to raise two children alone, while fighting a drinking problem and a general fear that kept her from driving on highways, Turner embraced God a decade ago and saw her life turned around. She thinks the Almighty -- whether you use the term God, Jesus, Allah, whatever -- has work to do, even in a city council chamber.

"People can get ugly in there," she says. "We don't want anyone to fight; even if you disagree, you can do it in the right away. Don't slam books, fists, say something you'll regret. We're asking the Lord to be among us, to open our ears so we can take him in."

At First Baptist Church of Love one chilly Sunday morning, three women sit in the community hall after Bible study. To hear the three, who all grew up in Fredericksburg, talk about the Turner case is to hear a roaring wave of nostalgia for the way the world used to be.

"Teachers can't control kids anymore because the government took God out of all these places," says Barbara Brown, now 61, a tall woman with a well-worn Bible. "You can punish kids, but back in the day, you could spank them with no one hollering child abuse. The government has taken over."

The other two women nod.

"When this country was established, it started with the Ten Commandments. If it started with one religion, it should stay that way. It wasn't a melting pot for religion, it was a melting pot for people," says her sister, Sharon Gibson, now 58.

What if the entire Fredericksburg City Council were Muslim and prayers were routinely directed to Allah, the women are asked. Would God be satisfied to be acknowledged like that?

"Everyone is praying to the same God," Gibson says without pausing.

But Carolyn Tilghman, now 55, isn't as certain. "That's what I'm not sure about, if people are praying to different gods. I'm just not sure."

TURNER WAS BEAMING AS HE TOOK HIS SEAT in the ballroom of the Richmond Convention Center on a Wednesday in January. Because of his lawsuit, he'd been invited to the annual Commonwealth Prayer Breakfast, a decades-old, privately run event attended by hundreds of elected leaders from across Virginia on the first day of the legislative session. Afterward, he'd been asked by Speaker of the House of Delegates William Howell (R-Stafford) to deliver the opening prayer for the 2007 legislative session.

For more than an hour at the breakfast, Turner nodded his head as one top Virginia official after another got up and talked about the importance of Christianity in his life.

"The founders were convinced we'd remain a special place only as long as we maintained that faith in God," said Lt. Gov. William T. Bolling, a Republican.

"As you survey the length and breadth of my life this day, raise up upon the highest hill the cross of Christ. May my eyes never be distracted from it," prayed state Appeals Court Judge D. Arthur Kelsey.

Servers in aprons stopped with their plates of eggs to bow their heads and say "amen" after a wounded Iraq war veteran told the officials he wanted "to encourage you to have faith in Christ."

A short time later at the state capitol, it was Turner's turn to praise God. He climbed a dais and looked out over the members of the House of Delegates. Standing there, in his navy suit, Turner smiled a tiny smile before asking, "Shall we bow our heads?" The delegates and their aides lowered their eyes and listened.

"All wise, all merciful and all loving God, my heavenly Father . . . Please continue to grant wisdom, knowledge and understanding to our elected officials . . . Let decisions be made to better the quality of life for all the citizens of Virginia . . . Please, dear God, meet the needs of our widows and orphans," said the pastor. "It is in the holy name of

Jesus I pray. Amen."

Michelle Boorstein covers religion for The Post. She can be reached at boorsteinm@washpost.com. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at noon.