A 2008 speech by Rick Santorum in which he described an attack by Satan on the United States is getting renewed scrutiny after several Web-based publications circulated audio and text of his remarks over the holiday weekend.
“This is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war at all. This is a spiritual war,” Santorum said in an Aug. 29, 2008, speech at Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla. “And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies, Satan, would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country: the United States of America.”
The current presidential contender, a devout Roman Catholic, expressed his concern that Protestant churches were compromised by the “spiritual war” over the issue of abortion rights.
“Once the colleges fell, and those who were being educated in our institutions,” he said, “the next was the church. Now you’d say, ‘Well, wait, the Catholic Church?’ No,” Santorum said. “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.”
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