Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore (R), a controversial religious conservative running for Senate, claimed earlier this year that “shootings and killings” in the United States take place because “we’ve taken God out of everything.”
“We are losing the acknowledgment of God,” Moore said in remarks to Citizen Impact USA in August, captured in footage an Atlanta-based production company uploaded to Youtube in August and first flagged by CNN’s KFILE on Tuesday.
“You wonder why we’re having shootings and killings in 2017? Because we’ve asked for it. We’ve taken God out of everything,” he said. “We’ve taken prayer out of school. We’ve taken prayer out of council meetings.”
Moore, who has the backing of President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, is no stranger to controversial remarks. On Sunday, he cited “blacks and whites fighting, reds and yellows fighting, Democrats and Republicans fighting, men and women fighting” as examples of divisions in the United States, and claimed “God” would unite the country.
CNN’s KFILE last week surfaced remarks Moore made in February suggesting that the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were also a form of divine punishment.
Moore is supported by Bannon and former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, but not by Trump himself, who announced over the weekend that he will campaign for Moore’s primary runoff opponent, appointed Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL), on Saturday. The primary runoff election is Sept. 26.
