Governor Haslam vetoed the bill. Some of you may recall that I argued against the bill last week.
Here is a taste from an article in The Washington Post:
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam on Thursday vetoed a bill that would have made the Bible the state’s official book.
“In addition to the constitutional issues with the bill, my personal feeling is that this bill trivializes the Bible, which I believe is a sacred text,” Haslam (R) wrote in a letter to the speaker of the statehouse.
“If we believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, then we shouldn’t be recognizing it only as a book of historical and economic significance,” continued Haslam. “If we are recognizing the Bible as a sacred text, then we are violating the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Tennessee by designating it as the official state book.”
Read the entire article here.
The Bible must be the Catholic Bible. Otherwise it is not the Word of God and is just somebody else’s mistaken version of the Bible.
America as we know it owes more to Hammurabi’s Code than it does the Bible.
The original essay read
The people of the state no longer share a common Christian heritage, making House Bill 0615 look like little more than an attempt by legislators, perhaps threatened by such religious diversity, to protect a Christian culture that seems to be steadily eroding.
4 contentions in one paragraph, each of which are arguable esp #2 which is subjective and #3 which is purely speculative.
#4 is interesting: Although also accurate, I would not choose “eroding” as much as “under attack.”
Would I have suggested the law? No. Unnecessary, and unnecessarily provocative and nourishing to the left.
Would I have voted for the law? Yes: It has no legal force or import, and I believe that America as we know it owes more to the Bible than to any other single book.
Credit where it’s due. An historically accurate resolution. The arguments against are not historical, they are ideological.