A prominent Democrat mayor is standing up to the atheist bullies in defense of prayer in schools and slamming the “separation of church and state.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) made the comments at an interfaith breakfast Tuesday.
Adams is being criticized for saying in part, “when we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools.”
He is also getting flack from the ACLU of New York for comments on the so-called separation of church and state.
“Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state,” Adams said. “State is the body. Church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies.”
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He continued:
I can’t separate my belief because I’m an elected official. When I walk, I walk with God. When I talk, I talk with God. When I put policies in place, I put them in with a God-like approach to them. That’s who I am. And I was that when I was that third-grader, and I’m going to be that when I leave government. I am still a child of God and will always be a child of God and I won’t apologize about being a child of God. It is not going to happen.
We need to stand up for that. That is what has happened. We need to be that every day.
NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman claimed the mayor needs a refresher on the First Amendment.
“The very opening passage of the Bill of Rights makes clear that church and state must be separate,” Lieberman said. “We are a nation and a city of many faiths and no faith. In order for our government to truly represent us, it must not favor any belief over another, including non-belief.”
But the mayor’s office didn’t back down.
“The policies we make as an administration are rooted in the mayor’s belief in the creator. The mayor personally believes all of our faiths would ensure we are humane to one another,” said Fabien Levy, the mayor’s press secretary, according to CBS News. “While everyone in the room immediately understood what the mayor meant, it’s unfortunate that some have attempted to hijack the narrative in an effort to misrepresent the mayor’s comments.”
Caleb Parke is the SMG managing editor. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and connect with him at calebparke.com.