S. Carolina Targeted for Christian State

Aug. 12, 2004 -- Cory Burnell has given up on ever seeing the U.S. government adopt a conservative Christian agenda, so he and others who share his beliefs are trying to take matters into their own hands.

Burnell, 28, is one of the founders of ChristianExodus.org, a group that hopes to gather conservative Christians for a series of mass moves to South Carolina. The goal is to bring enough voters to the state to establish a government based on the Ten Commandments and conservative Christian values.

And if the federal government doesn't like it, Burnell said he and the other members of the board have not ruled out the possibility of the state seceding from the United States.

They are hoping to have people move to the state in groups of 12,000. Though the group currently has just about 600 members, Burnell said it has been only been in existence for a few months, and he is hoping to have 50,000 to 70,000 supporters in South Carolina by 2016.

But the transformation of South Carolina won't have to wait that long, he said.

"We'll be able to begin the debate with the first wave," Burnell said.

What put them over the top, Burnell said, was seeing what the Republicans have done since they gained control of the White House and both houses of Congress, even with a supportive majority on the Supreme Court.

He pointed out that abortion is still legal, No Child Left Behind has resulted in spending on public schools "exploding," a Ten Commandments monument was ordered removed from an Alabama courthouse and there has been no progress on getting a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

"About a year ago we were sitting down and we saw that the Republicans had no intention of fixing anything," he said. "They're not conservative, so we were at the end of our rope. We thought, 'We need to do something serious here.' "