Civil rights groups blasted the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, after he said he believed God had made him mayor, appeared to support compulsory prayer in public schools and said: \u201cDon\u2019t tell me about no separation of church and state.\u201d
\nThe head of the New York Civil Liberties Union led the condemnation.
\n\u201cWe are a nation and a city of many faiths and no faith,\u201d Donna Lieberman said. \u201cIn order for our government to truly represent us, it must not favor any belief over another, including non-belief.\u201d
\nThe mayor made the controversial remarks at an interfaith breakfast at the New York Public Library on Tuesday.
\nDiscussing his rise to power, the former police officer said he \u201cstrongly believe[d] in all my heart\u201d that \u201cGod said, \u2018I\u2019m going to take the most broken person and I\u2019m going to elevate him to the place of being the mayor of the most powerful city on the globe.\u2019 He could have made me the mayor of Topeka, Kansas.\u201d
\nThe voters of New York City elected Adams as mayor in 2021, by a comfortable margin over the Republican Curtis Sliwa and after winning a crowded primary in the solidly Democratic city.
\nAdams\u2019s time in office has proved controversial, from his approach to tackling crime, homelessness and sanitation, to allegations of nepotism, inconsistent veganism and bizarre remarks about how cheese is addictive.
\nAt the prayer breakfast, Adams also said \u201cWhen we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t tell me about no separation of church and state\u201d.
\nHe added: \u201cState is the body, church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies. I can\u2019t separate my belief because I\u2019m an elected official.\u201d
\nLieberman pointed to the US constitution.
\n\u201cThe very opening passage of the Bill of Rights makes clear that church and state must be separate,\u201d she said.
\n\u201cOn matters of faith, the mayor is entitled to his own beliefs. On the constitution, he must uphold his oath.\u201d
\nAn Adams spokesperson said the mayor \u201cpersonally believes all of our faiths would ensure we are humane to one another.
\n\u201cWhile everyone in the room immediately understood what the mayor meant, it\u2019s unfortunate that some have attempted to hijack the narrative in an effort to misrepresent the mayor\u2019s comments.\u201d
\nRachel Laser, president and chief executive of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said: \u201cIt\u2019s especially disheartening to hear the mayor of New York city promoting rightwing, Christian Nationalist talking points about prayer solving gun violence.
\n\u201cNot only is it simply untrue that prayer alone will end school shootings, but his words ignore the fact that students are free to voluntarily pray in public schools because of the separation of church and state.\u201d
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Tags\uff1aInterfaith churches, separation of church and state<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Civil rights groups blasted the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, after he said he believed God had made him mayor, appeared to support compulsory prayer in public schools and said: \u201cDon\u2019t tell me about no separation of church and state.\u201d The head of the New York Civil Liberties Union led the condemnation. \u201cWe are a nation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6732,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[1582,1170,1171],"class_list":["post-6731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-mayor","tag-new","tag-york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6733,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6731\/revisions\/6733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}