John F. Kennedy's famous Houston speech on church and state during the 1960 presidential campaign elicited Rick Santorum's after-the-fact disgust. Though Santorum misrepresents the speech in some ways--Kennedy didn't say anything about limiting religious institutions and leaders from speaking on public issues--he is right to find the speech theologically lame.
In trying to assure Protestant voters that they had nothing to fear in voting for a Catholic as president, JFK stressed that his religious views were "his own private affair." He laid out his vision of a chief executive whose public acts would not be "limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation."
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