BEING GOVERNOR OF ‘ALL THE PEOPLE’ — WITH MINOR EXCEPTIONS…. Republican Robert Bentley will be sworn in soon as Alabama’s new governor, and explained this week his commitment to serving “all” of his constituents.
He’s not above playing favorites, however.
Bentley spoke at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where the late civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once was pastor, and vowed to parishioners, ”I was elected as a Republican candidate, but once I became governor … I became the governor of all the people. I intend to live up to that.”
That’s a nice sentiment, delivered in the context of race relations. But Bentley couldn’t leave well enough alone. (via Taegan Goddard)
“There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit,” Bentley said. ”But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.”
Bentley added, ”Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.”
Asked later if he meant to be insulting to people of other faiths, Bentley replied, ”We’re not trying to insult anybody.”
No, of course not. It’s just an example of a soon-to-be governor announcing publicly that constituents who don’t share his faith should remember, “You’re not my brother and you’re not my sister.”
Why would anyone find that insulting?
I am curious, though, what Bentley considers everyone else in his state who “has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.” Great uncles and aunts? Second cousins? Family friend who shows up at birthday parties?
