Dude is a complete asshole and is using his position of power as a bully pulpit.

However, I wouldn't be particularly surprised if he could get away with it in Alabama; it's not a very diverse state. My guess is that his jab is aimed mostly at Muslims and atheists/agnostics and not so much Jewish people, though I would say that Jews definitely fall outside of his criteria as stated.

If you have faith in the democratic system, you'll hope that he will be smacked down if he tries to introduce discriminatory legislation, but be free to speak from his position of ignorance. It is a little worrying that he managed to make it through the gauntlet of American political life without someone using this kind of belief to destroy his career, but that might be an artifact of the environment and the severe "with us or agin' us" political polarization, and not so much a failure of the system.

I'm not too familiar with the American federal government - I assume the Supreme Court would have the authority to eventually override whatever he introduced if it were discriminatory and challenged in court repeatedly?

He's already been elected, so I don't see what he's got to gain by it

Could it be that, based on said statement, he might not be out for any particular gain, but rather good old politicized evangelism?

1) I don't know why you would choose to say such a thing on the first day on the job.
2) And he seems to be coming dangerously close to promoting if not pushing Christianity on his constitutents.
3) Does anyone think, regardless of the Constitution, this was appropriate or even intelligent to do?

1) Most likely he has many reasons to say it, more than just one. Possibly because certain religious groups were key to getting him elected. Possibly because he has strongly held religious beliefs and wants to share them. Hopefully because he holds or at least agrees with those beliefs. It is fairly unlikely, but possibly because he is just pandering to the crowd.

2) Not at all. There are unfortunately many people in this nation who hear a political official state their opinion and interpret it as government establishing a religion. The establishment of religion is not, nor was it ever, designed to keep religion out of government. Quite the opposite, founding documents and a huge body of evidence show that it is preferable for our nation's leaders to have religious convictions. The complete so-called "separation of church and state" is a recent popular concept with no basis in our nation's actual law.

As with many systems, policies tend to drift from one extreme to the other, then back and forth, as a pendulum. There have been many times in our nation's history where leaders would not get elected without support from pastoral leaders. Other times leaders needed to publicly eschew portions of their religion. Consider JFK needing to publicly state that he is not controlled by the Pope, while at the same time pleading for support at the Ministerial Association where he gave the speech. The policy pendulum has most recently swung away from religion, but over the past few decades has been moving back toward the more religious side.

3) It could be. He was elected to represent the people of his state. The state is right in the center of the "bible belt", where most everyone has deep religious beliefs. Wikipedia lists some of the state demographics: "In a 2007 poll, 92% of Alabamians reported having at least some confidence in churches in the state. In the 2008 Ameican Religious Identification Survey, 80% of Alabama respondents reported their religion as Christian (other than Catholic,) 6% as Catholic, and 11% as having no religion at all."


Re-reading the quote with that in mind, he is saying that he is firmly part of the 86%+ of the population, and asking for the 11% minority to join him. He is establishing himself as a part of the group that has 92% approval and 86%+ representation. Politically that can be a very wise move.

He's a hard core conservative Christan.. they are like that. I doubt he's going to pass Christan Law anytime soon, the US is too secular for that and too many non-Christan.. It's all just politics until they start mandating prayer service in schools.. then I would be worried..

Being a brother or a sister of a governor sure has its benefits...

Also:
... one nation under God, indivisible, with ....

I work for the government and this surprises me... In private you may hear people discussing religion, but you never hear about it just roaming the hallways and nobody pushes it on you either. For instance, we talked about Masons yesterday at lunch because someone running for Mayor here is a Mason and proud of it. Would he ever publicly say something like that to the citizens? Highly doubt it... Does he talk about it in private? Sure does! He's going to get every Mason's vote just because he belongs to the "club" so of course he's going to make sure that leaks out.

This guy has no benefits though, as someone mentioned, and is borderline crazy to do such a thing. His popularity rating just went down most likely because of it. I see him making it one term...