A federal appeals court has ruled against a county board in North Carolina over its tradition of opening meetings with mostly Christian prayers. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, ruled in favor of two residents of Forsyth County after the county’s Board of Commissioners allowed an invocation at a December 17, 2007 meeting in which a local pastor “thanked God for allowing the birth of his son to forgive us for our sins and closed by making the prayer in the name of Jesus,” reported the Associated Press.

According to the Beaufort, N.C. Observer, the invocation “also made a number of references to specific tenets of Christianity, from ‘the Cross of Calvary’ to the ‘Virgin Birth’ to the ‘Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.’”

Click here to read the entire article.