A GOP candidate for lieutenant governor in South Carolina said yesterday that public schools are pushing a “silent holocaust” in churches by supposedly turning young people away from Christianity.

Ray Moore has made criticism of public schools a centerpiece of his campaign, urging the state to replace public schools with an education system led by “churches, families, and private association” and warning that they turn students, like a young Hillary Clinton, into anti-Christian “janissaries.”

Speaking yesterday with conservative talk show host Steve Deace, Moore warned that public schools are “wrecking” Christian families.

Moore claimed that studies show that “80 percent of Southern Baptists youths are leaving the church and abandoning the Christian faith, and we think all of this is pretty much attributable to government schooling.”

“We think the main culprit is public schooling,” he said. “So there’s a holocaust, a silent holocaust going on in our evangelical churches.”

He also attacked the “viruses” of same-sex marriage and abortion rights:

The pastors go on and on oblivious like nothing is happening and they’re out there preaching against same-sex marriage and abortion, so why is same-sex marriage and abortion and all of these viruses latching on to our society so readily? And we think part of it is government-sponsored education where they’re thoroughly and aggressively teaching socialism, humanism; turning their hearts away from Christ; teaching them evolutionism; Common Core has pervaded the system even in the so-called Bible Belt South; we have sex education apart from covenant marriages being taught and homosexuality is being taught in the Bible Belt as well as the Northeast and the far-west. So the system is thoroughly handed over to egregious and harmful teachings, and it’s just wrecking and causing havoc in our churches and in our family.

Back in 2007, Moore criticized California public schools after the state enacted new laws protecting LGBT students: “The public school system is a monster, “but this [the new laws] may be the most egregious thing they’ve done.”

His group sent out a statement alleging that California was “mandating that public school children be indoctrinated to accept as normal the homosexual lifestyle and other forms of sexual deviancy” and warning that “California’s schools are now promoting behaviors and lifestyles that are physically and spiritually dangerous for children.”

In a 2012 radio interview, while promoting the movie “IndoctriNation: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America,” Moore railed against homosexuality: