New York City Mayor Eric Adams caused quite a stir last week when he questioned the separation of church and state at an annual breakfast of faith-based leaders in Manhattan.
“Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state. State is the body. Church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies,” declared Adams. “I can’t separate my belief because I’m an elected official. When I walk, I walk with God. When I talk, I talk with God. When I put policies in place, I put them in with a God-like approach to them. That’s who I am.” He also asserted: “When we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools.”
That’s pretty remarkable, especially coming from a politician who has sought to expand abortion in the Big Apple and who has claimed that if not for a past partner’s abortion, he would not have become mayor of America’s most populous city. “No other city in the nation or in the world has a public health department that is providing medication abortion. … We are the first,” Adams announced at a January news conference. What Adams’ comments indicate, then, is a deep double standard — and pronounced confusion — when it comes to how Americans understand the separation of church and state.
Stacking the Deck Against Religious Conservatives
Adams’ recent statements about religious faith and public service are not all that different from what other Democrats have quite recently argued. During the
