First, note that the religious people in Town C could probably not pray, on their own, before the meeting. That, in itself, might be held to be an establishment of religion. At the very least, the Freedom From Religion Foundation would threaten a lawsuit on the assumption that it would violate the establishment clause, and because a city council probably couldn’t pay the legal fees needed to fight such a lawsuit, they would have to cease their prayers. (When I was growing up, my community faced exactly this situation).

More to the point: You’ve removed one key element from the situation: you’ve removed the force of law. Your three towns choose, voluntarily, how they will open their meetings, and in that case I would support any given town’s decision. And if someone was offended by prayer, then I would support a decision to refrain from praying. But that is not the situation we are considering. Here is the situation we’re really facing, and I contend that this change makes a difference:

Town A tells it’s city council that they may pray if they wish, and they may refrain from praying if they wish. Town B tells it’s city council that they may pray if they wish, they may refrain from praying if they wish, but if they pray it tells them what viewpoints may and, critically, may not be expressed in their prayers. Town C is the most draconian: it tells it’s city council that non-religious people may start the meeting any way they wish (perhaps by reading a selection from King’s “I have a dream” speech, if the meeting is on racial tension) but it tells religious people that they may not, under any circumstances, quote the Bible’s command to “love your neighbor”.

Town C has, in essence, issued a gag order to it’s city council. Rather than maximizing freedom, this minimizes it. And if the town’s goal is to ” respect the views of all of it’s citizens”, but the town is mostly religious, then you have traded a policy which “fails to respect” the view of a few for a policy which fails to respect the views of many.

In other words, so long as the rule against offending non-religious people is not a guidline of prudence, but is instead a rule of law enforced by the guns of the State if necessary, then it will not be possible to turn viewpoint discrimination (the censoring of certain statements based on the content of their assertions) into “neutrality”.

Or so it seems to me.

Also, I think that something approaching neutrality is possible in many cases. Think of this thought experiment:

Suppose you have three towns. Town A begins every city council meeting with a Christian prayer. Town B begins every city council meeting with a moment of silence. Town C begins every city council meeting with a call to order. Town A clearly makes outsiders of non-Christians who might feel unwelcome. Town B accomodates religious people by providing them a space to practice their religion as individuals. Town C makes no particular accomodation for religious people, who are nevertheless free to gather before the meeting officially begins to pray. Which of the three towns best respects the views of all of their citizens?

My words also reflect my belief that, as one moves down the hierarchy of government from national to local to sub-local, government begins to look less like the Leviathan and more like a community. A city council is still government, but it has elements of a town hall to it as well; a local school board reflects it’s community even more closely. When a city decides to build a monument to Martin Luther King, Jr., is that the act of the authoritarian State or is it an expression of the community? It looks more like an affirmation of community values to me.

If all aspects of the community touched by “government” must always be secular then, in this age of growing government, only the secular and areligious will feel fully comfortable participating in self-governance.

None of that makes my choice of word correct (you are right to point this out). Analytically, my point (like the Establishment clause) applies only to acts of the state.

I don’t see how this follows unless you define the “public square” as official acts of the government like monuments. This seems a limited definition to me that would exclude all kinds of speech like: political speeches, debates, radio programs, protests, judicial opinions, print and other media, billboards and other advertising, books, state of the union addresses, etc. All of the above things, should, I believe be included in any meaningful definition of the public sphere. Of course, religious expression is alive and well in all of the above.

So, I guess I am asking you to define what you mean by public sphere.