On Monday (Feb. 20), Rick Santorum resumed his attack against President Obama's religious values before an audience of hundreds of students at Hope College, a Christian school in Michigan where there's a GOP primary on Tuesday.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Referring to the Obama administration, Santorum said: "You can see why they don't stand up for religious liberties. It's pretty obvious that they don't think religious liberties are particularly a high priority. When you have the president of the United States referring to the freedom of religion and you have the secretary of State referring to the freedom of religion, not as the freedom of religion but the freedom of worship, you should get very nervous, very nervous."
He also compared the president to tyrants who want to limit the role of religion and accused him of being weak in defending religious freedom.
"Because there's a lot of tyrants around the world who will talk about freedom of worship, but they won't talk about freedom of religion. Freedom of worship is what you do within the four walls of the church. Freedom of religion is what you do outside the four walls of the church. What the president is now seeming to mold, in the image of other elitists who think that they know best, is to limit the role of faith in the public square and your role to live that faith out in your public and private lives."This is a very dangerous thing, so it's not surprising to see that the president has done virtually nothing in calling out China in its repression of religion."Santorum went on to deplore "the persecution of the Coptic church" and the decline of Christianity in Iraq, where it "has almost been wiped out.""We've had a president for three years who says nothing, does nothing, allows it to occur," he said, biting off his words for emphasis. "No, this president has not stood up for human rights and has not stood up for religious liberty."
Over the weekend, Santorum repeatedly criticized the president over his religious values. On Saturday, he told supporters in Ohio that Obama's agenda is based on "some phony theology, not a theology based on the Bible." He defended these remarks on Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation, saying that he wasn't criticizing Obama's Christianity.
"I've repeatedly said I don't question the president's faith. I've repeatedly said that I believe the president's Christian," Santorum said.
However, when asked to comment on Obama's Christian faith in a 2008 Q&A at the Oxford Center for Religion and Public Life, Santorum said there was no such thing as a "liberal Christian" ("You're a liberal something, but you're not a Christian"):
[I]s there such thing as a sincere liberal Christian, which says that we basically take this document and re-write it ourselves? Is that really Christian? That’s a bigger question for me. And the answer is, no, it’s not. I don’t think there is such a thing. To take what is plainly written and say that I don’t agree with that, therefore, I don’t have to pay attention to it, means you’re not what you say you are. You’re a liberal something, but you’re not a Christian. That’s sort of how I look at it.When you go so far afield of that and take what is a salvation story and turn it into a liberation theology story, which is done in the Catholic world as well as in the evangelical world, you have abandoned Christendom, in my opinion. And you don’t have a right to claim it.
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