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A Fox News guest on Thursday slammed President Barack Obama's transportation secretary nominee, connecting him to an 18th century scientific movement that embraced reason, which she said was partially to blame for the Holocaust.

Fox News host Steve Doocy asked Penny Nance, CEO of the Christian activist group Concerned Women for America, if she could make any sense out of why Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx would proclaim May 2 as both a "Day of Prayer" and a "Day of Reason."

"He comes from North Carolina, which has the 7th highest church attendance, clearly he's not running for re-election since he's up for transportation secretary," she opined. "You know, G. K. Chesterton said that the Doctrine of Original Sin is the only one which we have 3,000 years of empirical evidence to back up. Clearly, we need faith as a component and it's just silly for us to say otherwise."

"You know, the Age of Enlightenment and Reason gave way to moral relativism. And moral relativism is what led us all the way down the dark path to the Holocaust... Dark periods of history is what we arrive at when we leave God out of the equation."

Foxx, who attends Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Charlotte, first declared a Day of Reason in 2012 at the request of Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics.

"I would like to actually thank [Charlotte] Mayor Anthony Fox for proclaiming a Day of Reason at our request," Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics President Shawn Murphy told Raw Story in 2012. "So, we do have support locally. … We requested a proclamation from the mayor’s office to proclaim it a day of reason and he was kind enough to oblige."

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The director of issues analysis at the anti-LGBT rights group American Family Association (AFA) is proposing that the government pass a law requiring that every American go to church or pay a tax penalty.

During his Thursday Focal Point radio program, Bryan Fischer backed a listener's proposal to have an "individual mandate from the government that everybody has to go to church."

"Because after all, Obamacare is all about improving the health of the American people," the radio host explained. "We know that going to church is good for you, it's good for your health. So we are going to mandate that you go to church for your own health and we are going to tax the atheists who don't go to church."

"Now we can't make you go to church, but we are going to penalize you if you don't," Fischer continued. "We are going to assess a tax on every atheist who doesn't go to church because those atheists are endangering their physical health."

"That is actually a brilliant, brilliant suggestion."

Earlier this week, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) used the Affordable Care Act's individual health care mandate as justification that every person be forced to buy a Glock 9mm handgun.

“Well, I got a great idea,” West said during a campaign rally in Florida on Sunday. “I believe for personal security, every American should have to go out and buy a Glock 9mm. And if you don’t do it, we’ll tax you. Now, I wonder how the liberals will feel about that one.”

(h/t: via Right Wing Watch)

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The man who is likely to be Alabama's next chief justice is warning that secular government will lead to Islamic law in the United States.

In an interview with conservative talk show host Steve Deace last week, Roy Moore opined that "a government that is denying God" was also allowing Sharia law to take hold.

The Republican candidate explained that he had no regrets after the Alabama Court of the Judiciary was forced to strip him of the chief justice title in 2003 because he rejected a federal court order to remove his Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse.

"I firmly believe that only God can heal our land and he is waiting for the American people to wake up to what’s going on around them about a government that is denying God and in doing so is bent on taking away those rights and liberties and freedoms given to us by God, in contradiction to the very organic law from which we are based," Moore explained on Friday. "I never regretted what I did, I did exactly what I knew I was to do and that is to stand firm and not let some federal judge tell me to remove a monument, which he had no right to do anyway."

"What they fear most is my acknowledgment of the sovereignty of God," he continued, adding that the federal judge had "violated not only our Constitution but the case law of the United States Supreme Court which says our religious freedom comes from God, and if it doesn’t come from God people have to realize we will lose it and that is happening in our country today with Sharia law and the allowance of religious practices for other groups but not Christians."

Earlier this year, Moore overwhelmingly won the GOP nomination in a bid to take back the title of chief justice. The Republican Party has pledged to give him its full support.

"The Alabama Republican Party stands firmly behind Judge Roy Moore to serve as the next Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court," Alabama Republican Party Chairman Bill Armistead said earlier this month. "Judge Moore embodies the conservative values and beliefs of the citizens of our state and the Republican Party in Alabama stands behind him 100 percent."

In recent months, Moore and his Foundation for Moral Law have been fighting to allow the small town Sylvania to use a Bible verse on their welcome signs.

"The Freedom from Religion Foundation has an agenda to remove any acknowledgement of God or religion from the public square and are trying to bully towns like Sylvania with threatening letters that grossly misrepresent the Constitution," Moore told the Times-Journal. “Sylvania refuses to be bullied by the anti-religious sentiment of the FFRF. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution stands for freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, and we look forward to representing Sylvania in this important matter.”

The Anniston Star Editorial Board has argued that a candidate for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court should not "promote his own particular brand of religion and tie it to questionable constitutional interpretations."

"One can — and should — question the propriety of an Alabama chief justice GOP nominee heading a foundation dedicated to a constitutional position on which he might one day have to rule," the editorial board wrote. "Here is a prime example of the sort of controversy on which a chief justice should avoid taking a public stand."

"He has disappointed us again."

(h/t: via Right Wing Watch)

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The archbishop of New York on Sunday agreed that Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum had a "good point" when he said that John F. Kennedy's speech about the separation of church in state made him want to "throw up."

In a 1960 speech, Kennedy had assured Southern Baptist leaders that as the nation’s first Catholic president, he would not take orders from the Pope.

Earlier this year, Santorum told ABC News that Kennedy’s words made him inclined to vomit.

“To say people of faith have no role in the public square, you bet that makes you throw up," the candidate insisted. "What kind of country do we live in that says only people of non-faith can come in the public square and make their case.”

“That makes me throw up and it should make every American,” Santorum added.

During an Easter Sunday interview, CBS host Bob Schieffer asked Cardinal Timothy Dolan if there should be a separation of church and state.

"You bet there should," Dolan asserted. "I find myself, believe it or not, agreeing with both of them. I would cheer what John Kennedy said. He was right. And I would find myself among those applauding that speech."

"That having been said, I would also say that Sen. Santorum had a good point," he continued. "Unfortunately what John Kennedy said in September of 1960 to the Baptist Ministerial Alliance in Texas has been misinterpreted to mean a separation of church and state also means a cleavage, a wall between one's faith and one's political decisions, between one's moral focus and between the way one might act in the political sphere. I don't think John Kennedy meant that."

Dolan also told Schieffer that there was not too much religion in politics today.

"I think politics, just like business, just like education, just like arts, just like culture only benefits when religion, when morals and faith has a place there," he said.

But when it came to the Obama administration's decision that all health insurance -- include those plans provided by religious institutions -- cover contraception for women, Dolan felt that the government had gone too far.

"We're still worried not just about our institutions, but also the individuals," Dolan explained. "So, we still find ourselves in a very tough spot. And we're still going to continue to express what we believe is just not a religious point of view, but a constitutional point of view that America is at her best when the government doesn't force a citizen or a group of citizens in a religious creed to violate their deepest held moral convictions."

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The daughter of televangelist Rev. Billy Graham says that it's important to discriminate against candidates who are atheists because politicians "should have a fear for almighty God."

In an interview with Ann Graham Lotz on Sunday, NBC host David Gregory noted that her father had advocated using every form of modern communication to spread Christianity.

"For the church, for my daddy, who is an evangelist, I don't think he was necessarily talking about the political arena when you're running for president," Graham Lotz explained. "It's interesting that Jimmy Carter and George Bush were both considered evangelicals, but very different. So to me, I still think we need to look at the policies."

"I would not vote for a man who is an atheist," she declared. "Because I believe you need to have an acknowledgement, a reverence, a fear for almighty God. And I believe that's where wisdom comes from."

A 2007 Newsweek poll found that 62 percent of Americans would not vote for a candidate who was an atheist, making atheists one of the groups most politically discriminated against in the U.S.

(H/T: Politico)

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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Monday said that President Barack Obama had taken his war on faith to the next level by wanting to establish a new "religion" for the purpose of rejecting all religious doctrines.

At an event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a supporter asked the candidate what the Obama administration's motive was for mandating that the health insurance provided by all religious institutions cover contraceptives for women.

"I think there is in this country a war on religion," Romney replied. "I think there is a desire to establish a religion in America known as secularism."

"They gave it a lot of thought and they decided to say that in this country that a church -- in this case, the Catholic Church -- would be required to violate its principles and its conscience and be required to provide contraceptives, sterilization and morning after pills to the employees of the church. ... We are now all Catholics. Those of us who are people of faith recognize this is -- an attack on one religion is an attack on all religion."

He added: "It's one more reason we need to get rid of Obamacare. It's also one more reason we need to get rid of Obama."

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who was campaigning with Romney, explained that Obama's philosophy was to treat "our Constitutional rights as revocable privilege from our government."

"If that's what this president is willing to do in a tough election year, imagine what he'll do after the election if he never has to face the voters ever again," Ryan warned. "We should never give our government that kind of power."

Dictionary.com defines secularism as "a system of political or social philosophy that rejects all forms of religious faith and worship."

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Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said on Sunday that former President John F. Kennedy's commitment to the separation of church and state made him "throw up."

In a 1960 speech, Kennedy had assured Southern Baptist leaders that as the nation's first Catholic president, he would not take orders from the Pope.

"But because I am a Catholic and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured -- perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this," Kennedy said. "So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again -- not what kind of church I believe in for that should be important only to me, but what kind of America I believe in."

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be a Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote -- where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference -- and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him," he explained.

On Sunday, ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked Santorum, who is also Catholic, about his claim last year that Kennedy's words made him inclined to vomit.

"I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute," Santorum remarked. "The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country."

"Kennedy for the first time, articulated a vision that said, 'No, faith is not allowed in the public square. I will keep it separate,'" the candidate claimed. "Go out and read the speech. 'I will have nothing to do with faith. I won't consult with people of faith.' It was an absolutist doctrine that was foreign at the time of 1960."

"But make you want to throw up?" Stephanopoulos pressed.

"Absolutely!" Santorum exclaimed. "To say people of faith have no role in the public square, you bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live in that says only people of non-faith can come in the public square and make their case."

"That makes me throw up and it should make every American," he insisted.

But Kennedy's niece, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, responded to a similar 2010 attack by half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) by explaining that critics had mischaracterized her uncle.

"America's first and only Catholic president referred to God three times in his inaugural address and invoked the Bible's command to care for poor and the sick," she wrote for The Washington Post. "Later in his presidency, he said, unequivocally, about civil rights: 'We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.'"

"John F. Kennedy knew that tearing down the wall separating church and state would tempt us toward self-righteousness and contempt for others. That is one reason he delivered his Houston speech."

Watch JFK's full speech here.