Prayer at Supervisors Meeting

* Last Tuesday, I attended a meeting of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors to support the living wage proposal. First, we were invited to join in prayer. However, the gentleman offering the invocation seemed not to understand where he was and why he was there.

Instead of inviting all present to join in a spirit of cooperation by calling upon their own God or higher power for guidance during the proceedings, he subjected us to a mini-sermon extolling the virtues of accepting Jesus Christ.

As he continued, I looked around the room and saw many angry and confused expressions. Some were simply shaking their heads in disbelief. (No pun intended.)

This is a perfect example of the kind of inappropriate behavior that does harm to the many good people of the Christian faith.

We must always respect religious belief and non-belief. The purpose of prayer is to unite those present to a common objective. I suggest that he failed to do his job because he lost most of us during the first paragraph.

TOM LONG

Ventura