Santorum Says He Doesn’t Believe in Separation of Church and State
Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said Sunday that he doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state, adding that he was sickened by John F. Kennedy’s assurances to Baptist ministers 52 years ago that he would not impose his Catholic faith on them.
“I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” Santorum, a devout Catholic, said in an interview from Michigan on ABC’s “This Week.”
“The First Amendment means the free exercise of religion and that means bringing people and their faith into the public square.”
Santorum’s latest foray into the hot-button, faith-based issues that so fire up the party’s evangelical base comes as his chief rival for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney, begins to pull ahead slightly in the state of Michigan, where he was born and raised.
Both Michigan and Arizona hold their primaries Tuesday.
While Romney’s been battling Santorum in Michigan for the past two weeks, polls suggest he’s got a comfortable lead in Arizona, a winner-take-all contest in terms of delegate allocation. Michigan’s delegates, on the other hand, are rewarded based on results.