In a radio interview this week, Lea Carawan, director of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, warned that the separation of church and state is part of a liberal plan to “ruin America” and will be “the death knell for our nation.”

Carawan, whose group’s advisory board includes several members of Congress, told Arizona-based host Josh Bernstein this week that the American people and many churches have “bought into a very insidious lie, which is the misapplication, misinformation regarding that phrase, ‘the separation of church and state.’”

“That is the death knell for our nation,” she said. “If the church of God, if the Christians do not engage in the public square and do not see that as their responsibility, their right and responsibility, then those that do not believe like us will absolutely fill the void. And what people don’t understand is that every nation will reflect somebody’s values. And up until now, it’s reflected Judeo-Christian values because the Christians have held to it and they’ve protected it every single generation. But if we do not protect it in our generation, if we buy this lie and we back out of the public square like we have for a decade or several decades now, we will find that we no longer have a free Republic. The threat is very real.”

Later in the interview, Carawan alleged that church-state separation is part of a liberal plot to “take over” America.

“The folks that are funding this, that are behind this progressive movement for decades, they understand that they must remove God from the culture, from the conversation or break the connection, the nexus between God and our rights,” she said.

“That’s how you take over the country, that’s how you ruin America and take over, that’s power.”