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Former State Rep. Saccone opens ‘discovery center’ dedicated to religion, Constitution

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Rick Saccone

The interior of the Constitution and Godly Heritage Discovery Center, located on the property of former state Rep. Rick Saccone in Elizabeth Township

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Rick Saccone

The sign for the Constitution and Godly Heritage Center, a museum that looks back on the country’s founding put together by former state Rep. Rick Saccone

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Provided by Rick Saccone

Former state Rep. Rick Saccone poses behind a model of a ship in the Constitution and Godly Heritage Center, set to open Saturday for invited guests. It will be open thereafter by appointment only.

Now retired from both politics and teaching, former state Rep. Rick Saccone had a collection of items on the United States’ founding, the Constitution and the crucial role that he believes religion played in both, but nowhere to put them.

“Here are all the things I’ve been collecting for years,” Saccone said. “I didn’t want it to sit in my basement. I want to share it with people.”

The Elizabeth-area Republican hit on the idea of displaying it all in a 550-square-foot cottage on his property he had been using for storage and calling it the Constitution and Godly Heritage Discovery Center. It will be opening for 200 invited guests Saturday, and then be open thereafter by appointment only. A George Washington impersonator will be on hand at the property on Boston Hollow Road in Elizabeth Township for the opening, a cannon will be fired and other activities will take place.

Saccone envisions it being a place where home-schoolers, church youth groups, Scout troops and other interested members of the public can come learn about the nation’s founding and “our godly heritage.”

“I felt like people don’t know much about the Constitution,” he added.

Saccone served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 2011 to 2019, representing the 39th Legislative District, which included a portion of Washington County. He became known for measures that would have placed the motto, “In God We Trust,” in public schools and making 2012 the “Year of the Bible” in Pennsylvania. Saccone was the GOP nominee against Democrat Conor Lamb in the 2018 special election to replace U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy in the 18th Congressional District after Murphy resigned following revelations of an extramarital affair and ill-treatment of staffers, and ended up losing to Lamb by 0.3%. Later that year, Saccone’s bid to become the Republican nominee in the redrawn 14th Congressional District came to naught when he was defeated by current U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler in the GOP primary.

The 63-year-old was thrust back into the headlines earlier this year when he was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 with other supporters of now-former President Trump seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Saccone later characterized a series of tweets he sent from the scene as being “hyperbole” and “figures of speech.” Nevertheless, he resigned from a teaching job at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe in the days after the insurrection.

Since leaving teaching, his time has mostly been filled by planning the center, Saccone explained, with much of its material having once been displayed either in his Harrisburg or Latrobe offices. There are reproductions of weapons from the Revolutionary War era, a copy of the New England Primer that was once used in public schools and is packed with biblical references, a 1958 report card from the Duquesne City School District that shows a religious education course was being taught, and other items.

Saccone is bound to get pushback from scholars and others who say the country was founded on secular, Enlightenment principles, and that founders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were deists. Saccone counters that he is not advocating that the U.S. become a theocracy, but that “God has been intertwined with our government going back to the founding.”

“That’s the history,” Saccone adds. “If you want to deny that history, that’s fine. It’s the history, you can say it doesn’t exist, but it does.”

While he is now more or less retired, Saccone said he does not rule out a return to politics.

“I wouldn’t rule it out, but I’m not actively planning anything,” he said.

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