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Texas Governor Rick Perry’s August prayer festival, to be held in Houston’s Reliant Stadium, has put him in the company of some pretty controversial folks. Organizers of the event have said that the purpose of the event is, in part, to convert non-Christians to Christianity. And as we noted last week, one pastor who’s signed on as an official endorser of the rally has argued that Oprah Winfrey is a harbinger of the Antichrist.

So what’s the latest? Via Right Wing Watch‘s Brian Tashman we learn that one of the event’s latest endorsers has taken dead aim at Lady Liberty herself. Oklahoma City-based pastor John Benefiel, the head of the Heartland Apostlic Prayer Network, delivered a sermon last August arguing that America was being punished by God for filling its landscape with false idols. You know, like the Statue of Liberty:

Libertas is also called the Freedom Goddess, Lady Freedom, the Goddess of Liberty. You know there’s a statue in New York harbor called the Statue of Liberty. You know where we got it from? French Free Masons. Listen folks that is an idol, a demonic idol, right there in New York harbor. People say, ‘well no it’s patriotic.’ What makes it patriotic? Why is it? It’s a statue of a false goddess, the Queen of Heaven. We don’t get liberty from a false goddess folks, we get our liberty from Jesus Christ.

Watch:

Students of American history will of course note that, in Ghostbusters II, the Statue of Liberty comes to life to defeat the demonic spirit of Vigo the Carpathian. How the mighty have fallen: