14 DAY TRIAL // Louisiana lawmakers are considering a new bill to name the Holy Bible as the official state book. The proposed legislation has passed the House Committee on Municipal, Parochial and Cultural Affairs with a vote of 8-5, and now heads to the full House of Representatives for debate.
The bill was sponsored by State Representative Thomas Carmody, R-Shreveport, who said that “The Holy Bible would be appropriate for the state of Louisiana, [because of the state’s] strong religious ties.” So, he sought to name a King James version of the Bible housed in the State Library of Louisiana as an official state emblem, Yahoo News reports.
However, this is certainly a controversial proposal for a state whose constitution clearly requires the separation between church and state. That's why, some committee members openly expressed their disagreement with the bill and voted against it, saying that the legislation was likely to upset citizens who were not Christian.
“If you adopt the Bible as the official state book, you also adopt Christianity as the state religion ... We are going to open ourselves up to a lawsuit,” state Rep. Wesley Bishop, D-New Orleans, said.
Others argued that if the Bible were to be named the official state book than “all books of faith” should be considered official state books. They suggested that the legislators pick a text that was not religious.