Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R) vetoed a bill that would have made the Bible his state’s official book. On April 5, the state Senate voted 19-8 to approve a bill making the Bible the state book. Haslam expressed “some personal reservations” about the bill, according to The Tennessean. In a letter sent Monday to Tennessee House Speaker Beth Harwell (R), Haslam explained his veto, saying he felt the bill “trivializes the Bible.”…. “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,” he wrote, citing an argument used by proponents of the bill for why the proposal wasn’t religious in nature. Haslam noted that he disagrees “with those who are trying to drive religion out of the public square,” but said it’d be a violation of both the Tennessee and U.S. Constitutions to make a sacred text the official state book…. “Our founders recognized that when the church and state were combined, it was the church that suffered in the long run,” he wrote.
I suppose we should be gratified that Gov. Haslam possessed sufficient wisdom and familiarity with the Constitution to recognize that making the Bible the official state book of Tennessee would be a supremely bad- not to mention unconstitutional- idea.
Haslam’s explanation seems nothing if not an attempt to straddle the gulf between Tennessee’s good, God-fearing, theocratic Conservative patriots and those who believe that government and religion function best when they function separately. In the end, I suspect no one will be completely satisfied. Theocrats will feel betrayed even as defenders of the separation of Church and State will be dismayed that Haslam didn’t veto the bill because of its clearly unconstitutional nature but rather out of political considerations. I suspect Haslam would have absolutely signed the bill if he’d been convinced it would withstand the inevitable court challenges.
Sponsor of making Bible official book of Tennessee files notice of bid to override Gov. @BillHaslam veto next week. #TNLeg
— Erik Schelzig (@schelzigAP) April 14, 2016
It’s not surprising that there’s an effort afoot to overturn Haslam’s veto. When you refuse to recognize that America isn’t a Christian nation, but rather a secular nation with a Christian majority, it probably makes sense to believe you have the right to give your faith the force of law. Except that America isn’t a Christian nation; it’s a nation in which roughly 3/4 self-identify as Christian, but the 1/4 of us who don’t resent the majority’s attempts to discount our refusal to profess the majority religion.
Christians are free to practice their faith as they see fit. No one is persecuting Christians by insisting the separation of Church and State be respected. Religious freedom is still a cherished and valued right in this country, and no one is proposing or even intimating that the rights of the Christian majority be abrogated in any way (there’s no “right” to force your beliefs on others who may not share them). It’s a manufactured problem in search of a solution, and Conservative theocrats continue to work to undermine the Constitution in order to advance their agenda.
I have to assume that Tennessee- like most any other state- has more than a few significant, seemingly intractable problems. Why legislators feel that obsessing over whether the Bible is declared the official state book seems nothing if not a distraction defies rational understanding.
Panem et circenses, anyone??
