The GOP race for the presidential nomination has produced some incredibly entertaining television programming in the past months.

Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania governor, appeared on MSNBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ and ABC’s ‘This Week’ to discuss a statement he made about wanting to vomit after reading former President John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on the separation of church and state on Sunday.

‘I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,’ he said. ‘The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in this operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.’

Santorum’s vision of what this future should be is fairly disturbing for a party that largely crafted its message around condemning the socialist agenda of President Barack Obama and pledging its dedication to the ‘Future of America.’

In laymen’s terms, a country governed by faith-regulated policies is a theocracy. Iran has one — they’re doing really well.

Santorum’s proclamation is a widely misinterpreted take on a speech considered a defining document in our nation’s political history — one in which Kennedy assured the country that his Catholicism, as he would eventually become the first Catholic president, would never compel him to be influenced or take orders from the Vatican.

‘I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials — and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against once church is treated as an act against all,’ he said.

The constitution calls for religious freedom, which, by implication, demands that elected leaders do not impose their religious beliefs during the decision-making process.

This is not to say religion hasn’t played a role in the public sphere, something Santorum struggled to articulate. He did say some of our nation’s greatest achievements were guided by deeply religious leaders.

That’s a fair statement, Martin Luther King Jr. was a minister after all. There’s a difference between being guided by your faith and being guided by the morals your faith has influenced. King turned to his faith for strength, but his perseverance for civil rights was one of human equality, not religious motives.

Not only is it laughable for an American who has ever passed elementary school U.S. history, let alone a presidential hopeful, to allege the separation between church and state should not be absolute, it directly defies the belief the founding fathers wrote into the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

But the belief predates the Declaration of Independence. It was introduced to the Western world by Roger Williams in the 1600s.

‘So revolutionary was this idea that it caused Williams to be banished from Massachusetts and to seek refuge in nearby Rhode Island, which he founded,’ wrote New York Times columnist Joe Nocera in a piece published Feb. 24. ‘In doing so, Williams created the first place in the Western world where people could believe in any God they wished — or no God at all — without fear of retribution.’

On Sept. 12, 1960, Kennedy’s speech echoed the belief stressed by Williams more than four centuries before.

Kennedy’s speech reaffirmed that the foundation of our country’s religious freedom is to coincide with the separation needed to protect that freedom. A future where religion plays a role in our nation’s highest office is not a future for a country that Abraham Lincoln stated was a government ‘of the people, by the people and for the people.’

Lauren Tousignant is a senior communications and rhetorical studies and writing major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at letousig@syr.edu or followed on Twitter at @lauT1.   

Published on February 28, 2012 at 12:00 pm