In the Town of Greece, a controversy has been brewing over prayer. The Town Board invites a member of the Greece clergy to lead a prayer at the beginning of each board meeting. And after Brighton resident Nancy Braiman attended a meeting to speak about a separate matter, she filed a complaint about the prayers with the local American Civil Liberties Union chapter.

"This is a government body, and they shouldn't establish religion," Braiman said in an interview last week.

So far, the controversy has focused not on whether there should be prayer at all but on what is acceptable in a prayer at a government meeting. Ideally, the Town Board would open its meetings with a silent moment of reflection instead of a prayer, says Gary Pudup, executive director of the local ACLU chapter. Failing that, he says, a wider variety of clergy offering non-sectarian prayers would be a step in the right direction.

ACLU leaders say the town offers the prayer opportunity only to Christian clergy members, and the clergy make references to Jesus during the prayer. The town is sending a message about which faiths are acceptable, says Pudup.

When the ACLU wrote the Town Board, asking it to require non-sectarian prayers, the town responded by saying it would not change the practice.

The town says it's not promoting any faith. In a June 20 letter to Scott Forsyth, the local ACLU's legal counsel, Greece Supervisor John Auberger said the town doesn't ask clergy to "advance any particular faith or doctrine." It also doesn't place restrictions or guidelines on the prayers. To do so would "inhibit religious freedom and freedom of speech," he wrote.

The clergy are chosen on a rotating basis from a list published in the Greece Post, wrote Auberger, and if a faith community not listed in the paper asked to lead a prayer, the town would make an effort to accommodate it.

The Greece Town Board isn't alone in opening its meetings with a prayer. The County Legislature opens its meetings with an invocation; individual legislators take turns inviting clergy from throughout the county.

The US Senate and House of Representatives also open sessions with prayer. Each has a chaplain who regularly leads the prayer. The invocation is typically, though not always, non-sectarian. Senate and House members often invite clergy from their home states. It's then that references to specific beliefs become more likely. (Congress is making an attempt to vary the religions represented before it. On July 12, the Senate expects to have its first session opened by a Hindu prayer.)

In a 1983 case, Marsh v. Chambers, the Supreme Court ruled that it was permissible for the Nevada Legislature to appoint a chaplain and open meetings with prayer, since the content of the prayers did not serve to "proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other, faith or belief."

The court also made a broader statement: that legislative bodies are within their right to hold prayers. It's not a violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, said the court, because it is "a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country."

(There have been no federal decisions on prayer as part of government meetings in New York, says John Hardenburgh, state legislative consultant for the national ACLU.)

To some local religious leaders, prayer at government meetings, handled well, can be an opportunity. Governments should not use prayer to promote a specific religion, says Gordon Webster, co-pastor at Downtown United Presbyterian Church in Rochester. But if a variety of faiths are represented and the clergy are speaking from their own tradition, it provides an excellent way to reflect on the community's religious diversity, he says. It would also provide elected officials a chance to reflect on their own beliefs, he says.

Webster, who spent the mid-1980's working for the Middle East Council of Churches in Beirut, Lebanon, has been a leader in interfaith efforts in the Greater Rochester area. Ensuring equal access to all faiths is important if a government body chooses to open its meetings with prayer, says Webster. If Town Board members are not responding to concerns that they are excluding non-Christians with the prayers, they are missing an opportunity, he says.

The issues in the Greece debate - free speech and government sponsorship of a religion - parallel those at play in a Forsyth County, North Carolina, lawsuit. The local ACLU is watching that lawsuit, says Gary Pudup.

Like the Greece Town Board, the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners invites local clergy members to lead a prayer at the start of its meetings. And like Greece, the Forsyth County board first received letters asking it to change its prayer policy. The commissioners didn't budge, and three residents, joined by the local ACLU, filed a lawsuit against the board.

They argued that the board invites only Christian clergy and that their prayers frequently refer to Jesus. The lawsuit, which has been filed in US District Court, claims that the board's practice and the prayers serve as an "unconstitutional endorsement of a particular religion," violating both the First and 14th Amendments. The suit asks that the board abandon sectarian prayer in favor of prayer that does not refer to a specific deity.

The county commissioners maintain that the public supports their practice and that they are inclusive of a range of faith communities. They voted, 4-3, to fight the lawsuit and have retained the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative legal group, to represent the county.

Nationally, the ACLU is leaving such fights to local chapters. Most of the challenges to pre-meeting prayers have been brought by ACLU affiliates in the Fourth Circuit of the US District Court, which includes North and South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Locally, the ACLU hasn't taken any action on the Greece issue, although its legal committee will discuss it at its next meeting, on July 17.