Last week, the Family Research Council’s Jerry Boykin spoke at one of the organization’s regional “Watchmen on the Wall” events in Springfield, Missouri, where he warned that Christians in America are being persecuted and called upon conservative activists to rise up like “God’s army.”

“If you’re a Bible-believing Christian, if you’re a person who has a biblical worldview, if you serve the one and only God, you are going to be persecuted, plain and simple” he said, pointing to Springfield’s non-discrimination ordinance which bans discrimination on the basis sexual orientation and gender identity [SOGI].

“This SOGI nonsense is an example of exactly what they’re trying to do us,” Boykin said. “They’re trying to put us in a situation where we’re going to lose our businesses, where we’re going to be forced to accept what Adolf Hitler forced the church to accept in Germany in 1937.”

“We’re at war,” Boykin said, as he declared that the push for gay rights is “evil” and cannot be compared to the fight for civil rights: “This is not about civil rights, this is about the evil that has come into our society and is trying to destroy our ability and our freedom to be able to worship our god as we choose.”

“We’re not rising up against evil,” he warned. “When we rise up against evil, we’ve got to rise up like an army. We’ve got to act like we’re in the military because, in fact, we are God’s army”: