Lake Norman Publications

Commissioners remove all prayer from meetings




Vote came after county’s first non-Christian invocation

By Kerri Hughes

LINCOLNTON – Lincoln County commissioners voted Aug. 3 to do away with beginning meetings with an invocation in favor of a moment of silence.

The movement was spur-of-the-moment, in response to Chairman Carroll Mitchem’s reaction to the first ever non-Christian invocation.

Dustin Barto, co-founder of the Foothills Interfaith Assembly, gave a Muslim invocation at the beginning of the meeting. Mitchem refused to listen to the invocation and left the room before Barto began, giving the vice chairman instructions to handle the meeting until he returned.

Commissioner Alex Patton, hoping to ensure that an incident like that never happens again, moved at the end of the meeting to implement the moment of silence in place of an invocation. It was passed 4-1, with Mitchem being the only one to oppose.

Commissioner Cecelia Martin first made a motion to have a moment of silence in May, but it was voted down 4-1.

“I feel like as a commissioner, once you’re elected, you represent all the people of this county, no matter what religious persuasion they are,” Martin said. “A moment of silence would be the best way to serve that, to allow everyone to observe their religious beliefs.”

Patton says that he voted to keep the invocation in May, but that no one was willing to come give one. The law prevents commissioners from asking people to give invocations, so people have to volunteer. Of 102 churches in Lincoln County, only two have volunteered in recent history. Both were Christian churches.

Mitchem believes that it should stay that way.

“Several months ago, when this issue came up, I said then that I would not listen to a Muslim,” Mitchem said. “When you read what is told about the Muslims in the Quran, it says to kill the infidels and the infidels is someone who does not believe the way they believe. I will not sit and listen to someone pray in that category of that belief. If they want to do that, that’s great. If they have county business, I’ll be glad to reach out to them, but I’m not going to listen to them pray.”

Mitchem also said that he would refuse to listen to a Wiccan prayer.

“If you have any real true Christian beliefs, I don’t think you’d sit there and listen to it,” he said.

Martin and Patton, however, say that they enjoyed Barto’s invocation, which included an Arabic-to-English translation from the Quran, the book of Islamic Holy Scripture, and a supplication of his own writing.

“There was nothing wrong or out of the way with [Barto’s] prayer,” Patton said. “He went out of his way to be non-confrontational. He knew it was an interesting situation and he went above and beyond.”

Barto saw Mitchem’s actions as disrespectful, but not offensive.

“I was more offended by the street preacher, Alan Hoyle, because he kept following me around harassing me,” Barto said. “He was talking so loudly when I was trying to sit with my wife, mother and daughter that I had to walk away. Some folks had to come out of the meeting and tell him to be quiet. That was far more offensive to me, because it was a whole other level of disrespectful.”

Barto says that he hoped that he and Mitchem could have had a conversation and come to a sort of mutual respect, but what Mitchem did later on in the meeting, including calling Patton a “lunatic,” killed any idea of that.

“He lied. While conducting government business, he lied about the fact that he walked out,” Barto said. “It bothers me when an elected official tells a blatant lie about something that’s very simple. If they lie about something simple, what else will they lie about? That offended me not as a Muslim, but as a citizen of this county.”

Mitchem maintains that he did not walk out on the invocation because he had left before the meeting started. In fact, he claims that the other commissioners were disrespectful to Barto.

“They didn’t stand up,” he said, referencing the fact that all commissioners stayed seated while Barto read the invocation.

While many may hope that the moment of silence brings equality for religious expression, Barto likens the removal of the invocation to when department stores removed seating areas when they were told they had to allow African-American patrons to sit, as opposed to complying.

“What happened last night really and truly felt like, ‘Well, gosh, now we have to let the non-Christians come in and pray so nobody can pray,’” he said.

Patton, however, sees the movement in a different light. He hopes that the moment of silence will both remove the opportunity to disrespect other religions and prevent the invocation from becoming an issue every month if Mitchem or others choose to repeat his actions.

Barto, however, wants the issue to remain in the limelight.

“I want this to be a moment that doesn’t go away,” he said. “We had an opportunity last night. This is a point in history that could radiate if we allowed it to, a moment where Lincoln County chose to embrace the diversity of the community rather than hide from it. … Tolerance is the absolute minimum in society, and what we want is peaceful coexistence. You don’t have to sacrifice your own religion to have appreciation for someone else’s.”

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