It looks like former Senator Rick Santorum is adding his voice to the right-wing chorus that has been loudly proclaiming that Barack Obama is not a “true Christian,” that his proclamations of Christian faith are ““deceitful” and that is understanding of the faith is “woefully deficient” and borderline sacrilegious. Steve Waldman at BeliefNet reports on a recent speech that Santorum gave to the Oxford Center for Religion and Public Life in which he asserted that Obama’s talk of the importance of his faith is “absolutely disingenuous” and “phony” and that Obama has “abandoned Christendom” and thus has no “right to claim it”:
Santorum, known for overtly connecting his faith to his politics, said the Democrats’ current efforts to be more faith-friendly are “a charade… I don’t think it’s sincere at all.” Obama’s efforts to talk about the importance of faith in his life is “phony–absolutely disingenuous. I think he’s a complete phony.”
Obama, Santorum argued, chose Trinity Church in Chicago because it was politically advantageous — “faith was an avenue for power.”
(At the end of the attack, he added that of course it would be inappropriate for him to judge the authenticity of Obama’s faith, as only God could do that.)
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However, he questioned whether liberal Christianity was really, well, Christian. “You’re a liberal something, but you’re not a Christian.” He continued, “When you take a salvation story and turn it into a liberation story you’ve abandoned Christendom and I don’t think you have a right to claim it.”
