Robert Bentley: Governor or individual?

LET'S SEE: The new governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley, a dermatologist, Baptist deacon and Republican, rose to a church audience and declared that unless you accept Christ as your savior, you would never be accepted by him as a brother or sister. The word spread as quickly as another star falling on Alabama and his first reaction was that he thought he was speaking only as an individual and not as the chief of his state, so he apologized if he offended anybody.

Question: What did we learn from all of this? Does it matter whether a person is only an "individual" instead of a governor as we react to what was obviously his most deeply held religious conviction? A simple politically correct apology doesn't answer the question.