Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich inserted himself into the long-running controversy about whether religious groups should be allowed to hold services in New York City public schools, and accused Mayor Michael Bloomberg of being “anti-religious.”
Gingrich made his comments in a speech to a coalition of religious leaders in Las Vegas ahead of Nevada’s Republican presidential caucuses.
“An anti-religious bigotry defines much of our intellectual elites,” Gingrich said.
An evangelical Christian church in New York’s Bronx recently lost a years-long battle to force the city to continue allowing religious worship services in public schools on weekends. The case was petitioned all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in December declined to review a lower-court decision.
In response, the city has said it will move to end prayer services held in public schools by dozens of churches and religious groups by February 12.
“This is nonsense. I don’t know why Mayor Bloomberg is so anti-religious,” Gingrich said, referring to New York’s three-term mayor. “I challenge Mayor Bloomberg to open up schools on the weekends.”
It also was not the first time Gingrich has criticized Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman turned politician. In December, Gingrich said Bloomberg “just wrote a check and bought” the post of New York mayor.
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