Three Words Worth Fighting For

Hashmel Turner is a man with a servant’s heart. He has served his country, his family, his government and the people of his community. And now, by taking a stand for his free speech rights, he is once again putting himself in the line of fire in order to serve his nation.

After his mother passed away, 17-year-old Hashmel Turner, the eldest of 10 children, was placed in the foster home of a Christian woman. It was there that he became a Christian.

Turner served in the Army in the sweltering jungles of Southeast Asia from 1969-1972. After returning home, the Vietnam veteran helped each of his nine siblings get a start in life. He even gained custody of his youngest brother, who had been in foster care, and raised him.

Turner and his wife Alice have been married 32 years. When his daughter’s job required her to relocate to Mississippi, he helped raise his 11-year-old grandson so he wouldn’t have to be uprooted from his home and school.

Rev. Turner is also the interim pastor at First Baptist Church of Love in Fredericksburg, Va., and a civilian employee (he works as a full-time motor vehicle operator and safety training instructor) with the U. S. Army.

Turner is obviously a man who takes his obligations seriously—his duty to his family, his employer, his constituents and his God—and his life reflects those priorities. Thus, when an opportunity arose to represent the needs of his community by serving on the local city council in Fredericksburg, where he’s lived for more than 40 years, Turner, who is African-American, rose to the challenge. And when Turner was elected to the City Council in July 2002, he asked to be included in the rotation of Council members who open the meetings with a brief prayer—a time-honored practice of the Fredericksburg City Council and countless other legislative bodies across America.

Several Council members had signed up to offer invocations, and once every three and a half months or so each took a turn in doing so. When it was his turn, Turner spoke from his heart and, like his fellow Council members, asked that God would guide the decisions and actions of the City Council. And in keeping with his religious beliefs, Turner ended his prayer, as he ends all his prayers, “in Jesus’ name.”

In the state where Thomas Jefferson penned the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom to protect the likes of three Baptist preachers jailed for uttering unlicensed prayers, it may seem strange that ending a prayer with three small words could ignite a legal brushfire. Yet it has. About a year after Turner joined the prayer rotation, the Fredericksburg City Council received a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union objecting to the way in which Turner ended his prayers. The letter issued a stark warning: either prohibit Turner from closing his prayers “in Jesus’ name” or face a lawsuit.

Refusing to either compromise his faith or censor his speech, Turner initially removed his name from the prayer rotation. But after further consideration, he realized that forfeiting his constitutional right to pray according to his conscience was not serving anyone, including the citizens of Fredericksburg. As Turner stated, “In the state our nation is in, and the world, my belief is that our nation and service personnel around the world need prayer. We should be asking for that protection and guidance.” So Turner re-submitted his name for the prayer rotation.

Once again, the ACLU threatened to sue over Turner’s use of “in Jesus’ name.” And once again, Turner abstained from offering a prayer until the legal question could be more fully explored. After consulting with constitutional attorneys and determining that he had a legal right to pray according to his conscience, in November 2005 Turner asked to be placed back in the prayer rotation. But during that same meeting, the City Council, hoping to avoid a lawsuit from the ACLU, voted 5-1 to adopt a policy of offering non-denominational prayers devoid of any Christian or other specific religious references. And in the months that followed, Turner’s request to be included in the prayer rotation was ignored.

That’s when the long-suffering Turner decided that the matter should be decided by the courts—not by the strong-arm tactics of the ACLU. Believing that his constitutional rights were being violated, Turner, with the help of The Rutherford Institute, filed a lawsuit and asked a federal court to affirm his First Amendment right to freely pray according to his conscience. After all, other members of the City Council are able to pray in the manner they choose and describe God in their own words. Apart from three small words, the other Council members’ prayers are not much different from Turner’s.

So why all the fuss? Why would a group like the ACLU, which claims to champion free speech, take on the role of censor? And now the well-financed group People for the American Way and a high-powered Virginia law firm have joined the ACLU in an effort to silence Turner.

In a hypocritical double standard, the ACLU in 2002 argued in defense of the First Amendment right of a Wiccan witch to pray at city council meetings. The ACLU’s arguments were curiously similar to Turner’s—that the Wiccan had been unfairly discriminated against because of her beliefs and was excluded from prayer.

The people of Fredericksburg should be grateful for a representative who knows how to stand his ground and fight for the things that matter. And with a re-election campaign on the horizon, the 56-year-old councilman realizes that this lawsuit could hurt his chance of being re-elected to serve those in Ward 4. But there are some things in life that cannot be compromised. For Hashmel Turner, his faith, his integrity and his civil liberties are three more things worth fighting for.