Doña Ana County Commissioners drop invocations from public meetings

LAS CRUCES — “The beginning of a governmental business meeting is not the time for prayer,” Jan Thompson told the board of Doña Ana County Commissioners on Tuesday.

Since 2018, the commissioners’ meetings have regularly opened with an invocation or prayer by local faith leaders and occasionally by county firefighters or medical workers. Prior to that, nondenominational benedictions had been permitted for over a decade.

But on Tuesday, after deliberations among the commissioners and comments from 21 people in attendance, the board voted 4-1 to rescind the 2018 resolution establishing invocations at meetings, effectively ending the practice.

“You’re all engaged, and that means a lot,” Commission Chairman Christopher Schaljo-Hernandez said ahead of the vote. “We’ve done a lot of great things here as a commission that we haven’t had any public comment on. We passed a $387 million budget for next year without one single person giving public comment.”

He also pointed out that municipalities within the county do not include invocations as part of their meeting agendas. While that is true, a majority of county boards across southern New Mexico do hold invocations or opening prayers, based on a Journal review of local county agendas.

Locally, the issue of religious invocations has been a focus of public comments before the commissioners for two years, with critics and defenders exchanging arguments and jibes.

Debates about governmental endorsements or participation in religious observance have occasionally made it onto the dais, as well. In April, the commissioners voted down a proclamation recognizing the yearly National Day of Prayer, which had once been routine business.

‘A moment of humility’

Isabella Solis served as a commissioner from 2017 to 2021. Since leaving office, she has occasionally returned to the commission chambers to deliver invocations herself as the founder of Isabella Solis Ministries.

Solis told the board that evangelical and Catholic communities “significantly shape our community,” and that as elected representatives, “you all have a profound responsibility to reflect the values and beliefs of your constituents.”

Opponents of the invocations, including professed atheists as well as churchgoers, argued they were exclusionary and inappropriate in civic meetings. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that such prayers are ceremonial and do not constitute an unconstitutional establishment of religion.

“If we lose the separation of church and state, we lose religious freedom,” said Jim Hoerst, who has argued since 2023 that invocations should be dropped from the agenda.

Among the invocation’s defenders, some framed the prayer as ceremonial, others as an evocation of moral virtue steeped in U.S. tradition since the first Congress.

“It’s a moment of humility and a moment of silence where we can all reflect before we make decisions that are going to change somebody’s life forever,” Tim Jenkins told the board.

Others were more assertive of Christian authority over public life, arguing for the expansion of prayer in schools and government settings, asserting Christian faith as part of American identity and threatening electoral consequences if commissioners voted the wrong way.

Commissioner Manuel Sanchez raised incidents in which religious zeal has tipped over into something darker, citing online personal attacks, including comments targeting homosexuals, as indicative of a divisive and potentially menacing sentiment. Similar comments were made, he said, at prayer events conducted on county grounds.

“My God teaches about love and aceptance of everyone,” Sanchez said, complaining that some were weaponizing religious messages against marginalized groups represented within the county. “We see this type of mentality — using prayer, using church — to disenfranchise them, to attack them; and I’m just tired of that.”

In response, several attendees protested that such comments did not represent a majority view among the faithful, and that doing away with invocations appeared to be collective punishment.

‘God is not being taken away’

“When public officials include invocations or other prayers as an official part of government meetings, they always risk unnecessarily dividing or excluding members of their community,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told the Journal. “Invocations, which are almost always delivered by Christian faith leaders, are divisive for residents of different faiths, who are nonreligious, and also for Christians who don’t share the same beliefs as the speaker. In these rancorous times, government officials should be working to unite us, not divide us.”

According to county data, 71% of the meetings’ invocations were by Christian ministers and an additional 7% were Catholic. Jewish speakers comprised 5% of the invocations, and 3% were nondenominational.

Commissioner Shannon Reynolds pointed out that following the single occasion when a Native American invocation was offered — in 2024, for the National Day of Prayer, accompanied by a drumming ceremony — “we got a lot of flak for that.”

The lone “no” vote on ending the invocations was Commissioner Susana Chaparro, who argued that hateful comments are a separate problem and that invocations were appropriate as long as “we (do) not name one specific religion.”

“God is not being taken away,” Commissioner Gloria Gameros said just ahead of the vote. “During a moment of silence, that’s where everybody can have the opportunity to pray the way they wish, and those that don’t want to pray, well, then they have that moment of silence as well. I feel like that’s just being respectful to all denominations.”