GOP candidate Rick Santorum becomes lightning rod in debate about religion's role in government

Controversy over the proper role of religion in American politics was inflamed yet again during the weekend when Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said that he wanted to "throw up" reading President John F. Kennedy's historic 1960 speech articulating his view of the separation of church and state. "I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute," Santorum told George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, on ABC's "This Week."

santorum-kennedy.jpgRick Santorum, left, has backed off his graphic language in reaction to a speech about the separation of church and state in 1960 by then-candidate John F. Kennedy, right, but not the substance of his observation.

In Santorum's view, Kennedy vowed in that speech that religion is a personal matter and "faith is not allowed in the public square."

Kennedy "threw faith under the bus in that speech," Santorum told an audience at a Catholic college in New Hampshire in  November. Kennedy was Catholic, as is Santorum.

In an interview Tuesday with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, Santorum backed off his graphic language, but not the substance of his observation.

The increasingly blunt religious language coming from Santorum and other Republican presidential candidates last week prompted a coalition of liberal and centrist Christian churches, and some Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and Sikh organizations, to issue a joint plea for less explicit religious appeals on policy matters, lest they encourage divisiveness.

For more than a generation, the Kennedy speech has stood as the definitive declaration of the modern presidency's perspective on both church and state.

It was delivered in Houston by a Catholic presidential candidate to an audience of deeply skeptical Protestant clergy.

The United States was still overwhelmingly Protestant, and suspicion of Catholics ran high. For months, campaign literature had circulated suggesting that a Kennedy presidency -- the first-ever Catholic presidency, and still the only one to date -- was an invitation for Vatican meddling in American government.

But in Houston, Kennedy said he envisioned a country "where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy" from any church; and a presidency whose "public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none."

"I will make my decision in accordance ... with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictates," Kennedy said.

Since then, however, America has become more polarized, even within its religious communities.

Once-settled questions like abortion, the meaning of marriage and the definition of family are up for fierce debate -- and the major religious traditions advocate views on all sides of the questions.

For years as a two-term Pennsylvania senator, Santorum has been comfortable describing his conservative social views in terms of his own Catholic philosophy, which frequently resonates among evangelical voters as well.

"We always need a Jesus candidate, someone who believes in this, right?" he told a New Hampshire town meeting on Jan. 5.

Santorum has sometimes described America as "a moral enterprise." He told a church audience in Eden Prairie, Minn., recently that Americans' devotion to equality springs from each person's equality before God. And the pursuit of happiness Thomas Jefferson referred to in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence refers to "doing God's will in your life. That's what true happiness is," he told the same group, to generous applause.

But Santorum has occasionally made clear that his social positions are founded on more than received faith.

"I'm someone who believes that you approach issues using faith and reason. And if your faith is pure and your reason is right, they'll end up in the same place," he said in a New Hampshire debate on June 13.

Charles Haynes, a scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington, noted that the cultural landscape has turned 180 degrees since 1960.

Then, nervous Protestants sought assurance from a Catholic that he would honor the valued separation of church and state.

"Now, conservative Protestants reject the phrase 'separation of church and state.' They point out that it's not in the Constitution. Now there's a whole new conversation, and the phrase no longer generates cheers, but jeers," Haynes said.

Santorum has said repeatedly that growing secularism in the United States means that increasingly, faith-based policy arguments by conservative Christians are unwelcome because of their source -- and that Kennedy's exclusion of church influence in public affairs seems to exclude faith-based values as well.

Haynes said Santorum is reacting to a culture war "between those who want to cleanse the public square of all reference to religion, versus those who want to impose their religion on everyone else."

Haynes said each violates American political tradition.

"But he's picked on a poor example of the problem if he's picked on the JFK speech," he said.

Haynes noted that Kennedy in Houston pointedly refused to back off his Catholic legacy. "He said he would never disavow his views or his church to win election," he said.

Haynes and John Barry, the New Orleans historian, said Santorum and others are free to import their religious views into the public square.

"Where you get your views from is immaterial," said Barry, whose recent biography of Rhode Island founder Roger Williams charts the birth of religious liberty in the United States.

But when they say it's God's will, who's to say what makes God happy? "Who in government is going to tell me what God's will is? That's the problem. The idea that you have a special message from God, that you know God's will, that everyone else is wrong, that's way over the line," Barry said.

"The difference I see in him is the kind of argument used, the fact that he demonizes opponents, the fact that you don't credit that they come to their conclusions for good reason, whether other religious or secular.

"He's charged that his enemies are tools of Satan. How the hell does he know that -- and I use that word deliberately," Barry said.

"Once you start violating the absolute separation of church and state, you're putting a human -- and a politician at that -- in the position of making a judgment about God. And it's God who's supposed to judge people."


Bruce Nolan can be reached at or 504.826.3344.