Plan to bar atheist doesn't have a prayer

Harry Greenberger will stick out like a sore thumb at the city's Katrina anniversary service next week, but that's the idea.

Greenberger will be in that prayerful gathering, if not as a rebuttal witness at least as an advocate for the godless. Under threat of litigation the Ray Nagin administration has reluctantly allotted him two minutes amid the Hallelujahs.

It probably won't be much fun for Greenberger, who, as New Orleans ' most prominent atheist, wouldn't normally be seen dead at a religious event, let along stand up and address the congregation.

He says he has nothing against religion but figured that a service sponsored by the city, should be open to all God's children. Well, he didn't put it like that, but you get the drift.

Greenberger, who is president of the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association, read in this newspaper last month that the city's anniversary commemorations would include "an ecumenical prayer service at noon at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Auditorium."

Anyone "interested in participating" in anniversary events should contact Emeline Deese at City Hall, the newspaper reported. So Greenberger fired off an e-mail, opining that the service constituted an unconstitutional entanglement of government and religion.

He did not, however, demand that it be canceled. Instead, he asked that he and "other secular residents of New Orleans " be permitted to speak.

Deese forwarded the e-mail to Clover Davis, who is in charge of service arrangements, but no response was forthcoming. It is a fair bet, however, that the administration found Greenberger's request somewhat perplexing. An atheist at a prayer service -- even an ecumenical one -- may have been seemed too incongruous to take seriously.

But Greenberger wasn't going away. He finally e-mailed Nagin himself, pointing out that 14 percent of Americans ain't got no religion and that they are no less deserving of "recognition, condolences and encouragement" than the righteous....