Is he running for President or for Pope? Either he really believes what he’s saying or he’s lying. It’s disturbing either way. I’m no fan of Obama, but this is just way off base for its presence in American politics.

Lashing out on two fronts, Rick Santorum on Saturday questioned President Barack Obama’s Christian values and attacked GOP rival Mitt Romney’s Olympics leadership as he courted tea party activists and evangelical voters in Ohio, “ground zero” in the 2012 nomination fight.

Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator known for his social conservative views, said Obama’s agenda is based on “some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology.” He later suggested that the president practices a different kind of Christianity.

So what does the increasingly ignored and irrelevant United States Constitution have to say on this matter?

“[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
- Article VI, United States Constitution

Upon commenting on this article on a social media site, I had one individual reply with this…

“The amendment you quoted forbids the GOVERNMENT from applying a religious test towards candidates. The Constitution in no way prohibits individuals from selecting a candidate based on religious considerations.”

A distinction without a difference.

Why would anyone consider it legitimate to apply a condition to public service that the principles of governance, as outlined within the ostensibly supreme law of the land, specifically reject as a criterion for that service? And if this is especially the case since the government is supposed to represent ‘we the people,’ and be - at least in principle - in the service of the public interest and will. So to make religion a ‘test’ of one’s political affiliation pretty much counters the whole notion of what is supposed to drive civic life in America. It’s why our Enlightenment-influenced (and often Deist) Founders wanted a republic that segregated direct partisan religious affiliation from undue influence in governmental affairs. They wanted to avoid a situation where public service was predicated upon religious affiliation, rather than one’s civic record. They saw what that kind of religious role of legitimizing tyrannies did through the eons of history, and didn’t want that replicated here.

Santorum, by questioning Obama’s “Christian values,” is saying that being a Christian inherently increases your qualifications for civic service. That seems to me to be a radically and fundamentally un-American position to take, in the context of what principles American governance is historically supposedly based upon. But history doesn’t seem to be a strong suit among Americans any more these days. Though again, was it really ever?

Read The Original Article

Update: Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce lays into Santorum on this issue, as well. And though I think the strident tone of this piece is a bit over the top, his summary point is right on the money…

Political campaigns are not theological. It is dangerous to make them so. You get people turning fundamentally political arguments into theological disputes, and you’re not far from the darker impulses that lead to the bastinado and a very dire St. Bartholomew’s Day. That Rick Santorum is willing to do this, like a child giggling with a blowtorch, is reason enough to disqualify him ever from a position of secular power. The rhetoric he has adopted comes from a history charred by fire, and sodden with blood.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.