Friday’s Hold the Line conference at The Road Church in Colorado Springs featured a host of prominent political figures, including U.S. Representatives Doug Lamborn (R-CO) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO). Comprising nearly a third of Colorado’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives, Lamborn and Boebert addressed the crowd of evangelical Christians and discussed their political agendas within the context of their faith.
Boebert took the stage after Sean Feucht, the controversial worship leader and organizer of Hold the Line. Boebert’s comments were heavy on religious content. “God, and begin to edify those around you and encourage those around you, I promise you — signs and wonders will follow you,” she said. “God is going to strip away all other possibilities, except for him. He is the only answer that we can turn to. We are approaching a time when we aren’t going to be able to find solutions in everything that we turn on TV and everything we listen to and everything we read, but if we believe, in believers, that’s when those signs and wonders will be shown to the nations.”
Boebert is no stranger to addressing faith-based political organizations. She spoke at the 2021 Truth and Liberty Conference in Teller County. “It’s time the church speaks up,” she said. “The church has relinquished too much authority to government. We should not be taking orders from the government. The government needs to be looking at the church and saying how do we do this effectively?!”
Boebert did touch on political issues, such as immigration, during her remarks. “It’s one thing to expose what’s going on — the open borders, the invasion that’s taking place,” she said, “Fentanyl that’s the number one killer of Americans 18-45. It’s one thing to talk about immigration and supply chain crisis. Government just bloating itself with more money, not really fixing the baby formula problem we’re having.”
Boebert has come under scrutiny following the May 14 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, where the shooter’s manifesto indicated adherence to the “Great Replacement Theory,” the idea popular among white supremacists that immigration is being used as a tool of the ruling elite to disrupt western societies.
Following Boebert’s remarks, Lamborn joined her on stage as Feucht and The Road Church’s pastor, Steve Holt, led the audience to pray over the legislators. Lamborn began his remarks by acknowledging Holt.
“We appreciate the fact that Steve [Holt, pastor of The Road Church] wants all of the seven mountains of society to be taken over for the Lord,” said Lamborn.
The “Seven Mountain Mandate” is a concept in evangelical Christianity which suggests that Christians should take over the seven mountains of cultural influence: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government.
Lamborn went on to outline his future legislative agenda — should he survive the primary challenge from Colorado Rep. Dave Williams (R-CO Springs), an outspoken election conspiracist with broad support from far-right activist groups like FEC United and Restore Liberty.
“I’m going to let you in on private conversations we’re having among ourselves, the conservatives in Congress,” Lamborn told the audience at The Road Church. “God-willing if we take back the majority — I’m speaking as a Republican — you can do more things in the majority than you can in the minority. For instance, you can’t issue subpoenas in the minority, but you can in the majority. We’re exposing the things that the Biden administration has been doing wrong, the lies we’ve been told, the laws that have been broken, the things that have been done that are just bad, we’re going to expose those things. Here are some of the things — this is not a complete list, by the way.”
Lamborn’s investigation list included a wide range of topics and grievances popular in the right-wing media sphere. “The IRS,” he said. “You saw how under Barrack Obama they did a lot of illegal leaking. In recent months, Donald Trump’s tax returns were leaked. You know, that’s against the law. Wealthy individuals have had their tax returns leaked. That’s against the law. We need to investigate that.”
In addition to advocating for wealthy individuals, Lamborn also wanted to look into the National Security Agency’s alleged investigations into Replacement Theory purveyor Tucker Carlson. “Tucker Carlson says that [the NSA] have been targeting his show’s communications,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s accurate or not, but we need to get to the bottom of that. That’s a serious problem.”
Lamborn also took issue with the Department of Justice. “Unfortunately Merrick Garland — by the way I’m so glad he never became a Supreme Court justice, they put him on ice for a year and waited until after [Donald Trump] was elected,” he said. “I’m so glad they did because we got Neil Gorsuch instead. He’s going to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Merrick Garland wants to mobilize FBI against parents who go to school boards and protest the mask mandates and everything, just ask questions, and now they’re called ‘domestic terrorists.’ We can’t have that. We need to investigate why did that happen. Why did the National School Board Association have such power over the Department of Justice?”
In addition to talk-radio grievances, Lamborn touched on conspiracies involving COVID and a recent fervor — inspired by conservative activist group STARRS [Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services] and Colorado Springs area homophobe Gordon Klingenschmitt — over Air Force Academy cadets who disobeyed a lawful order by refusing the COVID vaccine.
“COVID,” he said. “Where did it really come from? Were all of the mandates and closures really necessary? Even now they’re trying to kick people out of the U.S. Air Force Academy when they’re about to graduate — they’re days away from graduation. [If] they don’t take the vaccine they’re going to be kicked out, not become an officer and have to pay back $200,000. I am working overtime on trying to overturn that.”
Lamborn also expressed concern about the power of social media. “Social media platforms have too much power when they go out and cancel conservative viewpoints,” he said.
In addition to using congressional subpoena power to investigate Fox News headlines, Lamborn also suggested stripping prominent Democrats of their committee assignments. “Besides those investigations there’s some other actions I’d like to take if I were in the majority,” he said. “There’s some people that are now on committees that I think should not be on committees. I wouldn’t have done this initially, but they’ve done it to Republicans and what you reap, you sow. [Rep.] Adam Schiff [D-CA], on intelligence. [Rep.] Eric Swalwell [D-CA], who had a Chinese agent girlfriend. Should he be on intelligence? I don’t think so. I don’t think [Rep.] Ilhan Omar [D-MN] should be on foreign affairs when she goes around saying ‘It’s all about the benjamins,’ that’s the only reason Jewish groups like AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] have any influence, because they give out money and people take money and they go along with supporting Israel. There’s so much wrong with that perspective.”
In addition to Lamborn’s primary challenges from Republicans Williams and Rebecca Keltie, Lamborn is facing Democratic Party challengers in a newly redistricted race which now omits conservative strongholds in Teller County.
Michael Colombe, a special operations veteran who has worked for the National Parks Service and the Bureau of Land Management since leaving the military, hopes to be the Democrat to flip Congressional District 5. He said he was inspired to run by what he views as Lamborn’s failures in addressing the real problems facing El Paso County. “My experience out in the Pacific Northwest, overseeing 11 districts with many of the same issues that we have here — wildland urban interface, water, housing issues, transportation issues … There wasn’t engagement at the federal level into those areas as I observed on the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments, from attending meetings with the League of Women Voters, in events down at the Hillside [Community] Center,” Colombe said. “It revealed to me there was not the appropriate engagement in which a Representative should be listening to their constituents and scheduling regular town halls. There hasn’t been a town hall here for almost six years, and Doug Lamborn does not utilize the congressional district work weeks, in my opinion at all, to engage with constituents and identify needs and also actions and answers that he should be bringing to Washington to help people of Congressional District 5.”
Colombe said Lamborn’s comments at the Hold the Line event, at one of his rare public appearances in El Paso County, was out of touch with the needs of residents. “That is a very short-sighted agenda and a very self-serving agenda, in terms of serving himself, but also violating church and state by injecting religion into government policy, which is a huge no-no for me,” he said. “There is no room for religion in government policy, government policy is to ensure equitable justice, general welfare, common defense of U.S. citizens. He is injecting his religious extremism into policy, and that is very dangerous. That does not serve the entire population. It does not serve the district well. … It doesn’t serve the needs of the district where we’re running into the wildland urban interface, our water, our affordable housing, our transportation, our aging community. His agenda does not address any one of those concerns of the district, it only concerns him, his own personal interest and political interest. It does not serve the people.”
This is story is part two of a three-part series on the Hold the Line event. Read part one here. Read part three here.
