Trump-loving Pastor Robert Jeffress told a gospel music gathering in Tennessee this week that there’s “no such thing” as church/state separation in the Constitution, proving once again that reading is not his strong suit.

Jeffress was asked whether the Constitution mandates that public discourse be “totally secular.” Jeffress began his response by saying that the separation of church and state doesn’t exist in the Constitution and that the First Amendment was intended only to prevent the establishment of a state church that could coerce people to worship. … “We have allowed the secularists, the atheists, the humanists to hijack our Constitution and pervert it into something our forefathers never intended,” he said.

Of course, while the phrase itself isn’t in the Constitution, the ideas backing it up are right there in the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and the writings of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

The irony is that the right to own a AR-15 or anything like it isn’t explicitly in the Constitution either, yet the same conservative Christians who want people to be able to own those weapons constantly cite the Second Amendment. It’s okay when they distort the Constitution, but when liberals interpret it as written, it’s heresy.

Jeffress went on to say Donald Trump would be forever remembered as the most “pro-life, pro-religious liberty, and pro-Israel president in history.” I’m sure that’ll make for a fascinating footnote — “look at the shit his defenders said to keep gullible evangelicals in line” — after the textbooks detail all of Trump’s scandals, which were defended by conservative Christians desperate to cling to power.

(via Right Wing Watch)

