Print edition: 
A prayer kicks off almost every Wichita City Council meeting.
It's called an "invocation," but it's almost always a prayer — until Tuesday when Michael Alderfer stood at the podium and told people there's no need to bow your head.
Instead of a prayer, he talked about how too often religious and political affiliations divide people, and he quoted Abraham Lincoln as saying: "When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion."
Council member Sue Schlapp later did what the invocation did not.
"I believe all good flows from our heavenly father," she said. "And I'd like to bless this meeting this morning."
And thus began a discussion about whether prayer has a place in council meetings and whether the orators represent the community's diversity.
"There is no good reason to use public time to express private beliefs," Vickie Sandell Stangl said after the unconventional invocation and Pledge of Allegiance. "The only real purpose seems to be in elevating a public official's piety before the citizenry."
Sandell Stangl is the president of the Great Plains Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. She said council members are free to pray before meetings or any other time that isn't during public business.
"If the council continues to offer invocations from only one small segment of Wichita's rich religious spectrum, this would be an endorsement of religion and a violation of church and state," she said.
Council members seemed to disagree — and they broke from their usual line of not responding to public comment at the start of meetings.
"We do open the invocation up to all," council member Lavonta Williams said. "I don't think it's just for us that we're asking for the prayers. I think that we're asking that this day be blessed as well. So I for one would like to continue to be blessed before the council meeting."
Mayor Carl Brewer said Interfaith Ministries coordinates who will give invocations, so the city doesn't spend time and money on it.
"It's a very diverse community and our prayers or our openings reflect that," he said. "City hall is everyone's city hall no matter what your beliefs are."
Sandell Stangl maintained her position that religion doesn't have a place in public business.
In recent years, the council's invocations have been given by many Christian denominations, representatives from the Islamic Society of Wichita, two rabbis and several people who represent groups such as the Salvation Army, according to Sue Castile, executive director of Interfaith Ministries.
"We have not turned anyone away to my knowledge," she said. "But we don't have a lot of calls to do it. We certainly would welcome more folks."
Council member Paul Gray said all cultures have religion and that it has a place in public life. He said the Constitution doesn't speak to the separation of church and state.
As he spoke, Sandell Stangl approached the podium to respond. Gray preempted that, saying: "And, ma'am, this is not an open debate."
"I think the majority of the country does not have a problem as long as everybody gets a fair representation," he continued.
Wichita's city code addresses the invocation only once. It says: "The presiding officer shall announce the invocation to be given by a member of a rotating panel invited for such purposes from all the religious faiths in the community."
The First Amendment addresses the issue: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
