On Thursday, during a keynote address at the Air Force Academy’s National Character and Leadership Symposium, Dr. Ben Carson denounced the principle of church/state separation while putting forth a Christian Nationalist agenda that had no basis in the facts.

The neurosurgeon and former Trump-nominated Secretary of Housing and Urban Development was asked at the end of his one-hour address how God spoke to him during his darkest times. After relating the same anecdotes that he’s told many times over the years, about how he was an angry temperamental child who read the Bible and became a changed man, he segued into talking about how belief in God is the “reason that our nation excelled.”