A metaphor-laden speech delivered by Mayor Eric Adams at an annual interfaith breakfast event on Tuesday turned into a lightning rod as some observers were left uncertain on whether to take his words at face value.

“Don't tell me about no separation of church and state,” Adams said, speaking to a crowd of faith-based leaders at the New York Public Library in Midtown.

The mayor was following up on prior remarks made by his chief adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin, who said the administration “doesn’t believe” in separating church and state.

“State is the body, church is the heart,” he continued. “You take the heart out of the body, the body dies. I can't separate my belief because I'm an elected official. When I walk, I walk with God. When I talk, I talk with God. When I put policies in place, I put them in with a God-like approach to them. That's who I am.”

Moments earlier, Adams bemoaned the erosion of spirituality in everyday life. At one point, he said, “because when we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools.”

Unlike other mayors in recent history, Eric Adams has openly embraced spirituality and faith. Shortly before taking the helm at City Hall, Adams took a trip to Ghana for a “spiritual journey.” He has invoked Christianity when discussing his homeless policy. And more than once, he has said that God told him that he would someday become mayor.

But Tuesday’s comments raised questions about whether Adams sometimes goes too far in his religious rhetoric — or whether some New Yorkers are simply unused to hearing such remarks from the mayor of one of the world's most religiously diverse yet secular cities.

“He’s entitled to be who he is,” said Joseph Viteritti, a politics professor at Hunter College who argued that the language of faith is hardly unusual for a Black politician.

At the same time, he acknowledged: “The other side of it is that that kind of speech piques the sensibility of certain people.”

He pointed out that the mayor’s comments come at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court has moved rightward and there is a “murky line between church and state.”

Asked about the mayor’s remarks, Fabien Levy, the mayor’s press secretary, clarified that the mayor is not in fact opposed to the separation of church and state.

“The policies we make as an administration are rooted in the mayor’s belief in the creator,” Levy said in a statement. “The mayor personally believes all of our faiths would ensure we are humane to one another. While everyone in the room immediately understood what the mayor meant, it’s unfortunate that some have immediately attempted to hijack the narrative in an effort to misrepresent the mayor’s comments.”

Still, for some, the mayor’s speech represented a dangerous commingling of politics and religion.

“It is odd that Mayor Adams would need a refresher on the First Amendment,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “After all, he has sworn to uphold the Constitution more than once, first as a police officer, later as a state representative, and then last year upon becoming mayor. The very opening passage of the Bill of Rights makes clear that church and state must be separate.”

On Twitter, his comments were both ridiculed and criticized.

Political experts pointed out that Adams’ remarks deserve to be analyzed in context of both the setting and the fact that Black politics have historically been tied to the church.

“He’s in a room full of clergy,” said Christina Greer, a political scientist at Fordham University.

In a video taken of his speech, those in the audience for Adams’ speech sounded receptive, clapping and occasionally murmuring assent.

Greer pointed out that leaning into religion is a political tool commonly used by Black and non-Black political figures alike. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio, for instance, was not personally religious, but successfully courted and embraced religion during his eight-year tenure.

“He’s not the first to use it, but his overt use of it makes it a story because he uses a more blunt language,” Greer said, adding, “The bottom line is we’re dealing with a politician that the press corps and most New Yorkers aren’t used to dealing with.”

Similar to Greer, Viteritti said that it is important to remember that New Yorkers may simply be unused to seeing a mayor like Adams.

“We say we want diversity with Black leadership but we want them to be more like us,” he said, adding, “That’s not always the case.”