For the last several years, dozens of members of Congress have joined Religious Right leaders every April for a “Washington: A Man of Prayer” event held inside the U.S. Capitol at which speakers have repeatedly warned that 9/11 was God’s judgment on America and that God will punish this nation for legalizing same-sex marriage.

Last year, House Speaker Paul Ryan spoke at the event and today, Dan Cummins, the founder and one of the key organizers of the annual prayer gathering, published a piece in Charisma saying that having godly leaders like Ryan in office is a sign that America is undergoing “a third spiritual awakening.”

Ryan, Cummins revealed, is a big fan of right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton and has been busy laying the groundwork for repealing the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits churches and all tax-exempt organizations from “directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

Barton, of course, is a notoriously anti-gay Religious Right activist who has repeatedly stated that we will never find a cure for AIDS because the disease is God’s punishment for homosexuality and whose historical work is so shoddy that his book on Thomas Jefferson was withdrawn from publication by its Christian publisher.