Arizona senator suggests mandatory church attendance
Mar 27, 2015, 7:32 PM | Updated: Mar 28, 2015, 9:08 am
PHOENIX — Mixing politics and religion can be a tricky business.
U.S. President Thomas Jefferson said it best in his letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802.
“Legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”
However, if it were up to Arizona state Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, it would be mandatory for Americans to attend a “church of their choice.”
“How we get back to a moral rebirth in this country I don’t know, since we are slowly eroding religion at every opportunity that we have,” Allen said during a state legislative committee meeting Wednesday. “Probably, we should be debating a bill requiring every American to attend a church of their choice on Sunday to see if we could get back to having a moral rebirth.”
Allen chuckled during her discourse and later said, “Since that would never be allowed — and we would not even be debating that — I’m going to vote ‘yes.'”
Yes on what? Wait, this wasn’t about church?
The committee was not discussing a bill about mandatory church attendance — or even about religion in general.
It was voting on House Bill 2320, which would allow citizens to bring concealed weapons into public buildings.
So the un-separation of church and state idea… Yeah, it’s hard to say where that came from.
