A North Carolina school board meeting turned hostile after one board member lashed out at a Christian board member’s proposal to adopt a prayer before meetings, asking, “How much prayer do you need?”
At the Cabarrus County School Board of Education meeting on April 14, newly-elected board member Melanie Freeman, who openly ran as a Christian, asked the board to add an invocation before meetings.
Freeman argued that invocations were a “time-honored tradition of our country” that should be instated at their board meeting.
Fellow board member Pamela Escobar strongly opposed the idea, telling the board the prayer would take time away for “serious issues” and would make people feel unwelcome.
Citing the diversity of their schools, Escobar said, “If you put prayer at the beginning of this meeting, I don’t think that’s a welcoming sign to the people who are in this room tonight.”
“We are not in the business of faith and religion. That’s not what we do. We teach. We empower, we inspire. And so, to do something that would be the opposite of that is disheartening,” she continued.
“On top of it, this board prays. This board prays before every meeting if you choose to be part of it,” she said, mentioning other board members praying with a “conservative lobbyist” outside the building before meetings.
“How much prayer do you need? How much God do you need?” Escobar asked. “This is exclusionary,” she added.
Escobar continued to passionately argue that prayers were not an appropriate or worthy use of the school district’s time.
“They come here to work. To dedicate their lives to children. They didn’t come here to pray with you,” she continued, referring to school employees. “If you want to pray with them, take them to church. You want to be evangelical and do that? Go for it. But not on my time, not on their time and not on this community’s time. We’re not in this business. This is not the time or the place. We’re better than that.”
But Freeman defended her idea, saying that if the prayer policy was adopted it would be available to prayers from all religions.
Escobar said a prayer would open up the board to lawsuits.
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“I don’t need to participate in that, and I don’t think you need to make the entire school board join you in your prayer. And if you do, then you have to be prepared for people to sue us because they have the right to religious freedom,” she added.
Before taking a vote, Escobar asked to speak a fourth time to voice her opposition to the proposal.
“I don’t know why you need prayer to take this job seriously,” she said.
The board passed the motion, in a 5-2 vote, to have a policy committee draft a written policy for the prayer. The board will then read the policy and give the public an opportunity to comment before implementing the policy. The policy would most likely entail inviting outside clergy to lead the prayer before meetings to avoid potential litigation concerns, an attorney for the board said.
Freeman and Escobar did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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