Republican Lauren Boebert says she wants ‘biblical citizenship training’ in public schools

Lauren Boebert

Republican Colorado representative Lauren Boebert has suggested that children in public schools should be forced to undergo “biblical citizenship training”.

Boebert’s chilling comments were made on an episode of FlashPoint, a Christian news show which airs on the Victory Channel, owned by the anti-LGBTQ+ televangelist Kenneth Copeland. 

The Colorado Republican and gun rights activist, who has previously said that LGBTQ+ people should be banned from coming out before the age of 21, discussed the upcoming midterm elections and said Republicans must prove that they will “get America rolling again”.

She added: “Maybe we need to have some sort of legislation that requires… biblical citizenship training in our schools. And that’s how we get things turned around.”

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Boebert appeared to be referring to a course run by one of her fellow Flashpoint guests, former Texas state legislator and now owner of Patriot Academy, Rick Green.

Green’s Patriot Academy runs a course titled “Biblical Citizenship in Modern America”, which claim they can teach people the ins and outs of the US constitution, while basing good citizenship entirely on the Bible.

During the course of the FlashPoint episode, Boebert confirmed that she had taken the eight-week video course, which includes a host of anti-LGBTQ+ guests like Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver, and Christian activist David Barton, who has compared same-sex marriage to incest. 

Green has said that the course aims to train up millions of voters before the next presidential election.

Forcing public schools to teach ‘biblical citizenship’ would violate the first amendment, one of Lauren Boebert’s favourite topics

Of course, forcing school children to be trained in “biblical citizenship” would violate the first amendment of the US constitution, which is widely understood to ensure a separation of church and state.

Ironically, Lauren Boebert is a big fan of the first amendment, having claimed it protects many things, from Donald Trump’s right to be on Twitter, to slurs remaining in the Scrabble dictionary.

However her stance isn’t exactly surprising – in June, Boebert described the separation of church and state as “junk”.

Speaking at a Colorado church, she told a crowd: “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not meant to direct the church. That is not how our founding fathers intended it.

“And I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk, that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like what they say it does.”