Source: Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty
http://www.bjconline.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3676&Itemid=112
A policy inviting religious leaders to use meetings of the Forsyth County (N.C.) Board of Commissioners as a platform to promote their faith is unconstitutional, threatens religious liberty and degrades religion by entangling it with government, says a Baptist church-state organization in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Tuesday.
The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty filed an amicus brief in the appeal of a case brought by two residents of Forsyth County, N.C., who filed suit in March 2007 against the county. The residents challenged the county’s practice of allowing sectarian government-sponsored prayers at county board of commissioners meetings under the First and Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution and sections of the North Carolina Constitution. They claimed the Board’s prayers advance Christianity and have the effect of affiliating the Board with it.