Pastor Pushes Back Against Congressman for Calling Charismatics ‘The Christian Taliban’
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., has unleashed a firestorm of controversy and persecution against Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Colorado, by calling charismatic Christians, including the church’s recent guest speaker, Rep, Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., “the Christian Taliban.”
But the pernicious remarks by the Illinois Congressman may be backfiring on him, creating a spontaneous new phenomenon called “The Kinzinger Effect,” which makes people of faith and common sense fight harder for their faith and freedom.
“Congressman Adam Kinzinger has associated Lauren Boebert and Cornerstone Christian Church with terrorists,” says Jim Tarr, pastor of Cornerstone Christian Center in Colorado. “[Kinzinger] said, ‘There is no difference between this and the Taliban. We must oppose the Christian Taliban.’ These irresponsible comments have opened the door to many emails and phone calls that are vile and filled with hatred.”
Woke progressive leftists, atheists and easily triggered haters now apparently take orders and cues from Kinzinger, a self-described progressive Christian who seems unaware that freedom, equality and love for your neighbor are distinctive Christian values.
Pastor Tarr is digging his proverbial heels in, pushing back against those who try to shut down Spirit-filled, charismatic Christians from expressing their views and try to redefine the Christian faith in a liberal “progressive” way, like Kingzinger is attempting, despite being in violation of biblical truth and everything God offers to a person in relationship with Him through His Son Jesus Christ.
“I will insist on my right to speak up, advocate and passionately defend what I believe and what are my rights, even if the other side thinks they can conveniently silence my inconvenient opinions,” says the Colorado pastor, who has been thrust into a national spotlight amid the misinterpretation and twisting of Boebert’s remarks about the separation of church and state.
“All along, they try to justify their demands for silence [from Bible-believing Christians] through what they falsely believe is a fixed American value that cannot be challenged. In any fair and free society, all ideas have a place, and may the best, timeless and well-tested values win.”
Kinzinger may have made one of the biggest mistakes of his career to cross the line—a line reminiscent of the line Jesus Christ drew in the sand amid the attempted stoning of the woman who committed adultery. Kinzinger has now become the poster boy for triggering persecution against Christians in America as well as liberal hypocrisy and, thus, stirring up Christians to get serious, get loud, get bolder and get the protection that the U.S. Constitution provides them.
“The Constitution grants us the free exercise of religion,” says Pastor Tarr. “We can exercise our faith as passionately as any worldview exercises its belief system. Good Christian men fought for this country, and I maintain my right to be fully involved in the restoration of our values and fight for the bright potential of America’s future.”
Responding to Kinzinger’s accusations and the anti-Christian discrimination that The Hill, The Washington Post, Newsweek and other mainstream, left-leaning media outlets reported, Tarr addressed Rep. Boebert’s statement about “the separation of church and state” to clarify the truth about the original statement and how it is used manipulatively and deceptively as “constitutional” propaganda to drive a Marxist-friendly, woke progressive liberal agenda, which is what Boebert referred to as “junk.”
As a student of real history free of leftist revisions, Tarr sets the record straight: “Most people believe that the wall of separation is in the Constitution. It is not. The man who wrote the phrase, Thomas Jefferson, wasn’t even a signer of the Constitution. This phrase, ‘wall of separation between the church and state,’ was written by Jefferson in a correspondence between himself and the Danbury Baptist Association.
“The Danbury Baptist Association was concerned that the state of Connecticut had granted them the right to exist as a religious organization. This may sound like all was good but their concern was that the state had granted them their right, rather than the government’s necessary submission to the God-given right to exist—having been endowed by their Creator with such a right. If the state of Connecticut granted them their religious rights, then the state could take those rights away. But even more concerning, the state could establish a state church. This is everything the early seekers of religious freedom were trying to escape.”
The Founding Fathers were not creating a country free of the church, which, in Spirit-sensitive Christianity, means Bible-believing Christian believers, not solely a brick-and-mortar building, which non-spiritual people tend to have difficultly grasping. It refers to “We the People.” This is why Judeo-Christian values are so fundamental to the United States and its unique commitment to freedom and individual rights in a timeless sense.
“Thomas Jefferson’s point was that the church would always be protected from the state in the United States of America,” Tarr adds. “There is no legitimate interpretation in the correspondence of the Danbury letter that Christians are not allowed to participate or influence government like any other citizen. The wall of separation was to protect the church from the state—very important to our Founders—not the state from influence of the church.”
The more there is spiritual awakening and revival, the more there is freedom and a thirst for freedom in America, as demonstrated at the founding of the United States in 1776. As citizens, Christians have the right to bring this “freedom mindset” to influence government policies. Boebert never said other groups with differing views cannot express their opinions.
As a conservative, she is committed to freedom and equality for everyone—a unique American trait that scares woke progressives and disrupts the global elite’s plan for the global reset.
Within the context of sharing her personal testimony of experiencing the living God personally and powerfully, Rep. Boebert was speaking as a Spirit-filled believer in the pulpit of Cornerstone Christian Center on June 26th, not a “religious” person pushing an institutional religion.
She elevated the meaning of “the church” (aka the body of Christ), but her colleague in the U.S. House of Representatives, the liberal mainstream media and the masses on Twitter completely missed the deeper point, revealing their ignorance and lack of spiritual discernment. The Bible has a description for these kinds of people.
However, the Colorado church’s pastor, who is incidentally setting a new example of courage and fortitude for church pastors across America to partner with the Holy Spirit to create the atmosphere for the next Great Awakening, is not the only one who is outraged by Kinzinger’s “irresponsible” comments likening conservative Christians with terrorists. Kinzinger’s comments caused Larry O’Connor, a radio talk show host and former editor/writer at Breitbart, to erupt on Twitter and strikingly call out Kinzinger’s hypocrisy.
Appalled at Kinzinger’s attack on conservative Christians, O’Connor tweeted out directly to the Illinois Congressman on June 30: “All of us at Breitbart helped you win in 2010 when the protesters in the streets were calling YOU Christian Taliban and Nazi. Remember all the posters of you and Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin with swastikas? You’ve become the very people we fought against to help you get elected.”
Here’s my column at Breitbart in 2010 when Democrat protesters depicted Kinzinger as Hitler. https://t.co/MsHqEXHiyb
— Larry O’Connor (@LarryOConnor) June 30, 2022
Another Twitter user, using the moniker “DustInTheWind,” criticized Kinzinger for the ignorant and weak move to “carve up Christians.”
@AdamKinzinger Rising up against your own is a flash dance. Your time has ended, they’ve turnt you out. Your last play is to carve up Christians? We have so many issues and you chose this to crow about? You’re the Peter to the Bible’s Judas.
— DustInTheWind (@counsel4ubaby) June 30, 2022
The question is how far and wide will “The Kinzinger Effect” stir the body of Christ (people of faith) to wake up, speak out, take a stronger stand for freedom and liberty and stop compromising before it is too late, and all Christian leaders and the average Christian are stigmatized as “terrorists.”
Conservative Christians, especially female conservatives such as Lauren Boebert, and black conservatives such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, are a threat to the left-wing regime’s authoritarian rule with its secular religion of imbalanced, self-hating “equity,” critical race theory, political correctness, cancel culture, pre-born child sacrifice on the altar of convenience, exclusive special interest group-driven control and other extremist woke views. Will the church wake up from its post-COVID pandemic slumber and realize what is happening to the freedom of religion and freedom of speech under those who dismiss Christian faith as effectively nothing worth Kinzinger crying over? {eoa}
Anthony Hart is a freelance writer for Charisma News.
