Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, blasted religious leaders and politicians who told their followers that Christianity was persecuted in the United States.

“They’re trying to scare them,” he told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, “because they know that if you get people scared, they’re going to say, ‘what can we do to change this.’ And they’re going to say, ‘follow us.’ Just do what we say and we’ll get it done for you.”

“I appreciate the fact that Santorum has been honest. I think he’s told us some of the scariest things that I’ve ever heard about religious freedom. It’s made me probably more fearful than any presidential candidate ever has. But he’s been honest with us. He’s told us what he will do with that office.”

“But know this,” Gaddy continued, “if you go with this Republican path of a ‘war on religion,’ of taking back this country for God, all of those kinds of things, you’re going to see religous freedom minimized if not done away with altogether.”

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