Lord Mayor of Leicester is standing by his decision to ban prayers
Lord Mayor Colin Hall has broken his silence after banning prayers from town hall meetings, saying: "It was controversial – but I stand by my decision."
After taking office last month the Leicester city councillor decided not to continue the recent tradition of having prayers said before monthly full council meetings.
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Colin Hall
A short prayer, rotating between different faiths, has been said at the meetings since 1997, with only a one year gap between 2005-06.
Yesterday he said: "I'm simply not comfortable with prayers being said before council meetings. I think all faiths deserve equal treatment and respect. "Saying prayers for a particular religion before council meetings was not inclusive.
"It's something that doesn't get noticed from month to month, but at the mayor-making ceremony last month many people came up to me afterwards and told me how outdated they felt the prayer session was and I agreed."
He said he was not an atheist and identified more with agnostics, who are unsure whether there is a God or not.
"All faiths should be treated equally and non-believers should be treated in the same way as those who believe," he said. "That's what I'm trying to do with this decision not to say prayers before meetings."
Mr Hall has previously called the practice "outdated, unnecessary and intrusive" and says religion has "no role to play" in council business.
He appointed humanist Allan Hayes as his chaplain for the year and his consort Eleanor Davidson is also a humanist.
However Christians have objected to the stance.
Liz Hudson-Oliff, spokesman for the Diocese of Leicester, said: "The Lord Mayor is perfectly within his rights to run council meetings as he sees fit and as he prefers.
''The tradition has been for prayers of all Leicester's faith communities to be used, since it reflects the motivation of many council members. It does seem that publicity given to the 'religious issues' that have affected this early part of his tenure have overtaken the significance of other areas of his work.''
Christian Voice director Stephen Green said: "This is just another example of Christian traditions and values being eroded."
Mike Judge, of the Christian Institute, said: "The reading of Christian prayers before meetings symbolises our Christian heritage and offends nobody."
Mr Hall will write an article for the Mercury next week, outlining his values and beliefs.
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by John, Loughborough
Friday, July 02 2010, 6:29PM
“As I understand it there are only 2 things where Councillor Hall has digressed from previous practice. The first being the decision not to have prayers at the start of council meetings. A decision having been made by a former mayor in 1997 to introduce them.
The second was to request that the Civic Service at the Cathedral acknowledge all faiths rather than just being an Anglican service. It is the fact that it is a Civic ceremony that caused the mayor to make this request and the insistence of the Cathedral that it remain exclusively Christian that prompted him to decide not to attend.
Surely for a city such as Leicester, a religious service involving a single denomination from a particular religion is no longer appropriate. An inclusive civic ceremony welcoming the appointment of a new mayor, involving all the communities of the city, on neutral territory (say the Walker Stadium) would be much more appropriate.
My understanding is that the mayor is very happy to be the guest of the various religions of Leicester ( he describes himself as an agnostic) and will show respect for the followers of whatever religion is involved and accept their hospitality.
The dispute is about whether "civic" ceremonies should just be associated just with the Church of England.”
by Margaret Taylor, Leicester
Thursday, July 01 2010, 6:08PM
“It saddens me to see the honour of the office of Lord Mayor cheapened in this way. The office of Lord Mayor is not conferred lightly and is largely one of the PR exercises used to highlight everything within the City of Leicester. I am afraid his image so far is negative and insulting to the people of Leicester. As he will find during his year of office he will be asked to events and invited into organisations which normally would be quite alien to him. I do hope that he will not further insult people by refusing to attend because he is sticking to his own principles regardless of the needs of the people he is representing.
The year of office should be a brilliant experience of the diversities of Leicester.
As a past Lady Mayoress it certainly was for me. It would not have occurred to us to encourage such adverse attention”
by John, Loughborough
Sunday, June 27 2010, 3:13PM
“Paul of Leicester said "does our lord mayor also still stand by his decision to support the violent thugs of the UAF."
Please show us when the Lord Mayor has supported violence by any members of the UAF? He appears to be in the company of David Cameron in supporting the UAF. See http://uaf.org.uk/about/founding-signatories/ .”
by paul, leicester
Sunday, June 27 2010, 10:00AM
“does our lord mayor also still stand by his decision to support the violent thugs of the UAF.”
by Marc Draco, Middlesbrough
Saturday, June 26 2010, 1:10PM
“Stephen Green is a talking head that would be affronted if someone sneezed near a church. The man is quite clearly deluded and frankly should be taken with laughing gas.
"Who is this man to imply that God is out dated.If its not broken dont fix it" - Kate
Actually, "god" - the concept invented by ancient Jews 4000 years back - is completely out of date.
There may be a higher power or there may not be - but to claim the Christian God (the one that Mr. Green alludes to) is anything other than a human construct is ridiculous.
The only reason we can't be sure that there isn't a god is that we (in science) cannot prove a negative.
Pretty much everything claimed in the Bible has been proven to be false; and most of the historic events can be shown to be either made up or the limitations of human knowledge.
For instance, there is no evidence whatsoever, that the Jews wandered the deserts for 40 years; the story of Noah is frankly laughable and even Jesus can be shown to be a construct likely based on even more ancient myths (i.e. Dionysus).
These facts are not in doubt. It's time we grew up and accepted them.”