legal background<\/a>: The constitutionality of the [Congressional] chaplains\u2019 prayers was upheld in 1983 by the Supreme Court (Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783) on the grounds of precedent and tradition. The Court cited the practice going back to the Continental Congress in 1774 and noted that the custom \u201cis deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country\u201d from colonial times and the founding of the republic. Further, the Court held that the use of prayer \u201chas become part of the fabric of our society,\u201d coexisting with \u201cthe principles of disestablishment and religious freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The following prayer was offered by Fr. John A. Peck (see his Orthodox Church of Tomorrow below) at the Prescott (Ariz.) City Council meeting on Sept. 9. Fr. John is pastor of Prescott Orthodox Church, The “Mile High” Mission. Invocation Prayer O God, the God of principalities and powers, authorities and dominions, we ask You […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[232,228,234,296,233],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}