Bishop E.W. Jackson, the former Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia who is now a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, spoke at last week’s FRC Watchmen on the Wall conference, where he warned that America is being “threatened from within” and that church-state separation groups like the ACLU and the Freedom From Religion Foundation are literally representatives of “demonic power.”

Jackson told the roomful of conservative pastors that the ACLU and the FFRF are “not simply human beings who disagree with us.” Instead, he said, the groups’ church-state separation efforts come from “demonic power moving to shut down the power of God that comes through prayer.”

Earlier in his speech, Jackson told a story about a woman who his friend met on a plane who was weeping for Israel. While Israel faces risks such as a nuclear Iran, Jackson said, “I wonder if we as Americans are as serious about the fact that we are threatened from within and that there are people who want to fundamentally transform the nature of this country, who really do not believe that we are a providential nation.”

Jackson added a dig at the theory of evolution: “All men are created – not evolved, but created – equal.”