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Rep. Borowicz crossed a line

AMY ERSHLER

Loganton

I am a constituent of state Rep. Stephanie Borowicz, R-Clinton-Centre counties.

On Monday, March 25, she delivered the invocation for the Pennsylvania House when Rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell, the first Muslim elected to the Legislature, was sworn in.

Among other things, she said that every knee will bend to Jesus.

As a public official she is obligated to honor the separation of church and state. Her prayer crossed that line.

As Gov. Tom Wolf noted, Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn on the basis of freedom of conscience. Many Supreme Court cases address the separation of church and state. In one in 1984, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said that the government may not endorse religious viewpoints.

She noted that a prayer or invocation only focusing on one faith sends a message to those of other faiths that they are outsiders and not full members of the political community and that those who practice the faith are favored members of the political community.

The representative’s comments said that only one faith was true, and that other practices were not worthy. However, every person in the Commonwealth matters no matter how they pursue their spiritual lives. Rep. Borowicz’s role as a state representative is to honor and respect all faiths. How she prays on her own is to be respected. But, how she deals with faith issues in the public sphere to which she has chosen to participate is subject to scrutiny.

Hopefully, she will not repeat what she did on March 25.

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