Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-D), who believes that there was a Jan. 6 “insurrection” and that he has a chance to be president of the United States, is outraged at statements Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) made Sunday about the separation of church and state. On Wednesday, Kinzinger raged semi-coherently on Twitter: “There is no difference between this and the Taliban. We must opposed [sic] the Christian Taliban. I say this as a Christian.” The Christian Taliban! Did Boebert call for the beheading of unbelievers? The firebombing of girls’ schools? Throwing gays off the top of tall buildings? Not quite.
There is no difference between this and the Taliban. We must opposed the Christian Taliban. I say this as a Christian
— Adam Kinzinger🇺🇦🇺🇸✌️ (@AdamKinzinger) June 29, 2022
What Boebert did say was certainly controversial. Speaking at the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Colo., Boebert declared: “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk — that’s not in the constitution. It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like they say it does.” The “stinking letter” in question was one Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802 that spoke of a “wall of separation between Church and State.” As commonly used as the “wall of separation” phrase is, it doesn’t appear in the Constitution, which says only that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
This means that there is to be no established, that is, government-supported, religion in the U.S. or government favoring of one religion over another. It does not mean, as it has often been taken these days, that religion is to have no place in public life, while drag queens cavort in elementary schools right after gender transition class.
Boebert, however, went even farther, asserting: “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our founding fathers intended it.” Many of the Founding Fathers would strongly object to the idea that “the church is supposed to direct the government,” but Boebert was likely trying to articulate the principle that the government should be informed by religious values, as John Adams stated: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Nonetheless, there is no doubt that she stated her point clumsily, in a way that left open a big target for the likes of Kinzinger.
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In taking aim, however, Kinzinger revealed both his prejudices and his ignorance. The Taliban, after all, is a terrorist group. Given the fact that the Biden “Justice” Department has likened angry parents at school board meetings to terrorists, it’s not surprising that the RINO congressman would imply that Boebert is a terrorist, but in doing so he revealed that, despite professing Christianity, he knows little about both Christianity and the Taliban.
The Taliban, after all, threatened in January to put 2,000 jihad suicide bombers in the Afghan embassy in Washington, D.C. Jihad suicide bombers remain a key part of their strategic force inside Afghanistan. Since it retook control of Afghanistan, Taliban jihadis have closed girls’ schools and endorsed women’s education only in Islamic religious instruction. They shot a couple dead for “moral corruption” in the Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The group has forbidden women to travel unless they’re accompanied by a male guardian. It has a kill list of gays in Afghanistan. It murdered three people at a wedding where music was being played because celebratory music is forbidden in Islam. It beheaded a junior volleyball player who was part of the Afghan women’s national team.
If Lauren Boebert really does want to jettison the First Amendment and establish Christianity as the official religion of the United States, that still doesn’t make her remotely like the Taliban, because Christianity simply does not teach that women must not travel without a male guardian, that homosexuals should be put to death, that music violates the law of God and those who play it should likewise be executed, or that those whose beliefs deviate from those of the ruling group should be beheaded.
Kinzinger, in calling Boebert “the Christian Taliban,” demonstrates his abject ignorance of both. He also demonstrates his distaste for the religion he professes to embrace, for if he knew anything about Christianity, he would know that even its most extreme expressions aren’t anything like the Taliban. He also suggests that underneath his politically correct exterior, he harbors some ugly “Islamophobic” views about the Taliban and Islam in general. Do his handlers know that Adam has unwittingly strayed off the reservation?
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