Santorum: Mainline Protestant Churches Are in the Grip of Satan

[cbayer]

This ought to really help him with the evangelical and fundamentalist christian voters

http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2012/02/this-ought-to-be-much-more-damaging-to.html


I know all the focus in the past couple of days has been on the Foster Friess aspirin joke and on Rick Santorum's past statements about sexual matters, but this strikes me as having the potential to do real harm to Santorum right now as well as in the future:

Kyle Mantyla of People for the American Way's indispensable Right Wing Watch has come up with an audiotape of a Rick Santorum address to the students of the conservative Catholic Ave Maria University in Florida, delivered in 2008. It's an altogether remarkable speech depicting Rick as a leader in a "spiritual war" against Satan for control of America. Much of its involves the usual right-wing stuff about the conquest of academia (outside bastions like Ave Maria) by the forces of moral relativism, but then there is this Santorum assessment of mainline Protestantism:

"Once the colleges fell and those who were being educated in our institutions, the next was the church. Now you'd say, 'wait, the Catholic Church'? No. We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it."

link to videotape:

&feature=player_embedded

[eShirl]

1. "This ought to really help him with the evangelical and fundamentalist christian voters "

Are you kidding? That's probably where he got the idea.

[cbayer]

2. Actually, you are probably right.

I was reading this as more an attack on all non-catholic religious institutions, but if the evangelicals see mainline churches as the "other", they would probably agree with him.

[pinto]

3. This whole blatant melding of religion and politics is really unsettling. Both have a place.

But tied at the hip isn't it. ~ pinto

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Seems like Santorum is a wedge issue for his own party

http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/How-the-Faithful-Voted.aspx

In 2008, white Protestant non-evangelicals voted 44% Obama, 55% McCain (slightly more Republican than white Catholics like Santorum). That's basically the group Santorum has just said are 'gone from the world of Christianity as we see it", due to Satan.