Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore implied during a speech to a church congregation in February that the U.S. could have been punished with the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks because the country had separated itself from God.
The comments were first reported by CNN’s KFile team.
Video shows Moore, who is currently competing with Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) in the state’s GOP primary, addressing the congregation at the Open Door Baptist Church.
Moore quotes the Old Testament Book of Isaiah saying, “Because you have despised His word and trust in perverseness and oppression, and say thereon … therefore this iniquity will be to you as a breach ready to fall, swell out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instance.”
“Sounds a little bit like the Pentagon, whose breaking came suddenly at an instance, doesn’t it?” Moore added in reference to the 9/11 attack.
“If you think that’s coincidence, if you go to verse 25, ‘there should be up on every high mountain and upon every hill rivers and streams of water in the day of the great slaughter when the towers will fall,’ ” he said, continuing to quote the passage.
“You know, we’ve suffered a lot in this country, maybe, just maybe, because we’ve distanced ourselves from the one that has it within his hands to heal this land,” Moore said.
Moore went on to say that God could be upset with Americans for legitimizing sodomy and abortion.
The candidate’s comments come out weeks before he faces off with Strange in the GOP’s special election primary runoff on Sept. 26.
A recent Emerson College poll found Moore leading Strange by a 14-point margin.