Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin raised eyebrows when he told a conservative talk radio personalty that a lack of Bibles in schools is responsible for the white nationalist violence in Charlottesville.
West Virginia radio host Tom Roten asked the Kentucky Republican about a controversial bill he signed allowing the Bible to be taught in public schools.
"When you go back a couple of hundred years, in most instances the only textbooks that were in our public schools were in the Bible," Bevin claimed.
"And it's interesting that the more we've removed any sense of spiritual obligation or moral higher authority or absolute right and wrong, the more we've removed things that are biblically taught from society, the more we've seen the kind of mayhem that we were just discuss," he continued.
Critics noted multiple problems with Bevin's reasoning.
"Say it all together now: The Bible was never banned from public schools," Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist. "What Bevinis referring to are mandatory Christian prayers. How that rejects some part of our history, I don't know."
"And why are we trying to replicate our education system from hundreds of years ago," Mehta added.
Bevin's habit of relying upon the Bible and prayer as a public policy response has been labeled as, "Kentucky-fried Christianity" by critics.
Bevin's official plan to reduce an epidemic of violence in Louisville's troubled West End was for people to walk the neighborhood praying for "two to three times a week during the next year."
"The weekend following Gov. Matt Bevin's prayer plan was marred by violence, leaving four dead in just three days," the Courier-Journalnoted.
Nine additional homicides have been committed in Louisville since that tragic weekend.
Listen: