Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is facing criticism after comments on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday, in which she appeared to equate Christian conservatism with efforts to turn back progress in the United States.

Speaking with hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, Clinton praised the nation as a “work in progress”.

Still, he warned against what she described as attempts to recreate a past dominated by “white men of a certain persuasion, a certain religion, a certain point of view, a certain ideology.”

“We haven’t gotten to the more perfect union,” Clinton said. “And people have been protesting for hundreds of years that things were not as they should be…”

“And the idea that you could turn the clock back and try to recreate a world that never was—dominated by, let’s say it, White men of a certain persuasion, certain religion, a certain point of view, a certain ideology—it is just doing such damage to what we should be aiming for.”

Clinton added that such efforts were “doing such damage to what we should be aiming for.”

She ironically urged Americans to “stop demonizing each other” but immediately attributed most of the division to the political right. Clinton falsely argued that conservatives seek to dominate the public square and whitewash historical realities such as slavery.