By David Gibson
The answers help explain not only the political dynamics of the current race, but point to a generational shift from the 1960 campaign, when John F. Kennedy had to reassure evangelicals like Billy Graham that he wasn’t too Catholic to be president.
“Now here we are, 50 years later, and evangelicals are not only willing to vote for Roman Catholic candidates but frankly they are flocking to Roman Catholic candidates” like Santorum and Newt Gingrich, said Ralph Reed, head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a top evangelical political activist.
“This is a big moment in American religious and political history.”
Both Reed and Hudson note that Santorum’s appeal to conservative Protestants isn’t really — or even mainly — a case of mistaken religious identity. Plenty of evangelicals know Santorum is a practicing Catholic; it’s just that it doesn’t matter the way it once did.
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