Constitution for the United States of America
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
As Andrew O'Hehir notes, John Kennedy clearly understood the Constitution when it came to religion and government.
"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute," Kennedy told the Houston ministers, "where no Catholic prelate would tell the President -- should he be 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 ... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials."
Contrast John Kennedy with Mitt Romney and the Republicans for whom secularism is a dirty word rather than a founding principle of this republic as Walter Shapiro quotes Mitt Romney:
Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone
While the Constitution requires that there be no religious test for political office, the RNC has a de-facto religious test for political nomination. Mitt Romney attempted to extend that religious test to cover Mormonism, but this attempt will be rejected at the national level. He fails the RNC religious test for office. He fails the nation by rejecting the secularism written directly into our Constitution.
And for those Republicans who stumble into this diary, contrast Mitt Romney and Harry Reid. Reid is also a Mormon - but Democrats do not require our candidates to shout out their religion in the public square, to wave it before the voters for their judgment on its sincerity. Religion is a between a person and their God - it should never stand between a citizen and a political office in these United States.