Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) says she is “tired” of the long-standing separation between church and state in the U.S., adding that she believes “the church is supposed to direct the government.”
In a Sunday speech at the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Colo., ahead of her primary election on Tuesday, Boebert argued that “the government is not supposed to direct the church,” falsely claiming that dividing religion from the system of government was not what the Founding Fathers intended.
“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,” Boebert said, earning a round of applause from the audience.
The concept of a separation between church and state is derived from the establishment clause in the Bill of Rights, First Amendment, which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
In 1802, then-President Thomas Jefferson penned a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, in which he wrote the American public had built “a wall of separation between Church and State.”