Republican Lt. Governor Dan Forest
Credit: Forest Official/ Flickr

Republican North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, who is currently exploring a bid for governor in 2020, delivered a sermon on Sunday denouncing America’s diversity and multiculturalism and calling for Christian assimilation.

Delivered as part of the Salisbury-based Cornerstone Church’s “Celebrate America Service,” Forest issued a stern warning that diversity was destroying America.

The comments were first noticed by American Bridge, a progressive research organization.

“[N]o other nation, my friends, has ever survived the diversity and multiculturalism that America faces today, because of a lack of assimilation, because of this division, and because of this identity politics,” Forest claimed.

Anti-multiculturalism rhetoric is popular among the growing white nationalist wing of the Republican Party. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has made similar comments in the past, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has attributed the rhetoric to white nationalist hate groups.

Forest’s fact are also simply wrong. America’s founders enshrined in the Constitution a clear separation of church and state in the First Amendment, stating that “Congress […]