Bob Terry, president and editor of The Alabama Baptist newspaper, says he opposes the Alabama’s controversial new school choice law because it is a threat to religious liberty.
In a March 14 editorial in the Christian newspaper, Terry wrote that the Alabama Accountability Act "violates the religious liberty of every Alabamian as set forth in the 1901 Alabama Constitution."
The act, approved by the Legislature earlier this month, creates tax credits for families with students in a failing school to attend a private school or another public school. Gov. Robert Bentley called it “the most significant piece of legislation that’s been passed in this Legislature in years.”
Terry, an ordained minister with degrees from Mississippi College and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., pointed to Article 1, Section 2 of the state constitution, which he says prohibits taxes for maintaining a church-related ministry. A tax credit, he said, is the same thing.
“That this point was never raised in the debate in Montgomery or in the state’s news media is both surprising and disappointing,” Terry wrote.
“That this could happen in Alabama where we vigorously resist efforts by other government entities to limit religious freedom is the greatest of ironies. That this could happen in a state where Baptists, the champions of religious liberty, are the predominate religious group, is equally astonishing,” he wrote.
Carol McPhail is on Facebook and Twitter.