A fiery invocation at the Georgia Statehouse this week has drawn complaints after the “Chaplain of the Day” told lawmakers that 70 percent of residents in the state were going to hell.

The controversy began when Georgia State Rep. Trey Kelley asked his father, Doyle Kelley, to deliver an invocation.

Kelley used the opportunity to speak before lawmakers to deliver a fire-and-brimstone rant about how the vast majority of residents in the state are headed toward an afterlife of eternal torment and damnation.

ADVERTISEMENT

“People always ask me, ‘Why is there so many lost people in the state of Georgia?'” he asked rhetorically during the invocation. “The statistics came out that there’s 70 percent of the people in the state of Georgia that are lost. That are lost. 70%. There’s over 10 million people in the state of Georgia. That means there’s 7 million people lost. And you want to hear it in Baptist terms? 7 million people that are lost are dying and on their way to Hell. That’s what that means.”

The Atlantic Journal-Constitution reports that Democratic Georgia State Rep. Josh McLaurin responded to the invocation by writing to House Speaker David Ralston’s legal counsel and asking him to examine whether the invocation violated the First Amendment’s clause against establishing a religion.

“On their face… these comments appear to fall outside the boundaries established by the U.S. Supreme Court for constitutional legislative prayer,” he wrote. “The Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence allows an exception for legislative prayer like the kind conducted in the House of Representatives each day of session, but constitutional problems arise when there is an indication “that the prayer opportunity has been exploited to proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other, faith or belief.”

Watch the video of Kelley below.