|
Orange County Atheists |
This page will serve as a gateway to information about the OC Atheists project to remove/change city council invocations throughout the county.
Since the project is just beginning, we're looking for volunteers in various OC cities to check out their city council meetings (either live, on their local cable systems, or via videotape or DVD supplied by the city) and report back on whether they observe an invocation (always at the beginning of the meeting), and whether it's overtly religious. Once we identify which cities are the worst offenders, we'll work out a plan of meetings with city leaders to hopefully eliminate invocations, but at least get them in line with current law.
To get us started, this link goes to an Excel spreadsheet with information I gathered via the web last year. It's not complete or up to date, but with everyone's help, we can flush it out and get started on the nitty gritty.
Please leave comments, questions, suggestions and findings in the comments here until we've got a better system in place. I'm looking forward to working with all of you!
Posted by mikebdoss at October 3, 2006 03:23 PMI took home the transcriptions of the Invocations from (Anaheim) City Council Meetings that I received at our last dinner/discussion and read them carefully. I noticed that collectively, the invocations thank God/Lord/Jesus for sovernly (sic) giving Anaheim the mayor and council members and to lead them in making wise decisions. Also, to bestow upon them blessings, wisdom, insight, guidance, strength, courage, conviction, protection, knowledge, assistance, direction, encouragement, etc. and also to give warnings not to move to areas we are not to move. It seems that the mayor and council are incapable of making decisions without help from God/Lord/Jesus.
I suggest that some research be done to find bad, unwise, or faulty decisions made by the mayor and/or council, trace back when those decisions were made, and study the invocations given at those meetings. If the God/Lord/Jesus that appointed them and gave them the above-mentioned attributes and they failed to work, that invocator’s God/Lord/Jesus should be banished from future invocations for failing to invoke as promised.
Niko Theris