It was only a couple of months ago that a group wanted Mississippi to establish Christianity as the state religion.
Now, two state legislators are trying to make the Bible the official State Book.
Rep. Tom Miles of Forest and fellow Democratic Rep. Michael Evans of Preston are spearheading the bill which was proposed last week, according to Evans.
Evans told AL.com that the idea came about while he was speaking with constituents.
“Me and my constituents, we were talking about it and one of them made a comment that people ought to start reading the Bible,” said Evans.
He said that they discussed “all the things going wrong in the world” and someone suggested making the Bible the state book.
Evans, in his fourth year as a representative, is Baptist. “I believe in the Bible,” he said.
The legislators added that no one would be forced to read the Bible, as if that should give them a pass from church/state separation advocates, but you’ll never hear them make the same argument in defense of any other religious text being adopted as the state book.
House Bill 386 would make “The Holy Bible” the state book effective July 1. All of the world’s problems will still be there on July 2.
[Also, cue jokes about literacy in Mississippi.]
You may recall that Louisiana tried to do something similar last year when Rep. Thomas Carmody wanted to make “a specific bible, the oldest copy owned by the state… the official state book.”
A month later, he pulled his own bill before it could go up for a vote because it “had become a distraction.”
Alabama is currently the only state to treat a Bible as an official state symbol. Not exactly a state worth emulating.
