Local officials say they won't change the way they pray at public meetings after a federal court ruled against prayers specifying a particular faith at government meetings.

The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said prayers that advance a particular religion are unconstitutional. The court concluded that prayer at public meetings is legal only if broadened to include all faiths. The case arose after a Great Falls woman protested her local Town Council's habit of opening meetings with a prayer in Christ's name.

Grand Strand leaders who regularly begin meetings with Christian prayer say they won't stop the practice.

"I don't tell them how to make their rulings, so they can't tell me how to pray," said Horry County Council Chairwoman Liz Gilland, who called the ruling "asinine."

"This is a perfect example of political correctness run amok."

The three-judge panel ruled that prayers mentioning Christ or other Christian figures or themes amount to an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion.

"The decision may be controversial, but if people think about it a minute, it's a pretty obvious point to make," said Joe Conn, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington advocacy group that supported the suit. "Government can't tell people which religion is better than another."

For as long as anyone can remember, local governments and school boards have opened meetings in prayer. In the South, the practice goes back more than 100 years.

Some local bodies, such as Horry and Georgetown county councils, often use the name of Jesus or of "our heavenly father." Others, such as Myrtle Beach City Council and Conway, invite leaders of many faiths to lead an ecumenical prayer and ask them to refrain from citing a particular religion. In recent years, leaders of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Baha'i faiths have led them.

Myrtle Beach's policy aims to reflect the city's diverse faiths, Myrtle Beach City Councilwoman Susan Grissom Means said. She said she has heard complaints from residents when prayers contained an overtly Christian bent.

"I do think we should represent all the people," Means said.

Myrtle Beach Rabbi Doron Aizenman has led the prayer in Myrtle Beach and said the city's policy is a good one. He said governments that tailor their prayers to a particular faith run the risk of alienating residents.

"To be all-inclusive is always good," he said. "We all believe in god."

Horry County Councilman John Boyd said generic prayers miss the point. He and Gilland said their prayers are meant as a personal communication between them and God.

"The intent is not to force a belief on somebody," Boyd said. "It's to honor the idea that we see a greater power than ourselves. I'm going to pray, and if the courts don't like it, I don't care."

County Attorney John Weaver said he will discuss the ruling with the council but that it will be up to council members to abide by the ruling or ignore it. Brunswick County, N.C., officials said they likely will discuss the ruling's implications soon. Governments that ignore the ruling risk lawsuits.

Last year, Alabama State Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore was forced to remove a courthouse monument to the Ten Commandments.

A year earlier, a federal court in California declared unconstitutional the mention of God in the Pledge of Allegiance.

In the Great Falls case, the woman who protested the prayer is a wiccan, a follower of an earth-based religion structured from historical pagan beliefs. She attended several Town Council meetings and told the court she was uncomfortable praying during a public government meeting.

Historians and political scientists say they expect more of these conflicts in the South, where a growing and diversifying population lives alongside a religious tradition dating back to the second Great Awakening in the early 1800s.

"As the south becomes more metropolitan, more and more non-Protestant and more and more diverse," said Harry Watson, Southern history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "there will be more complaints like this."