Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee suggested Friday that the absence of God from the nation's public schools may have contributed, in part, to the deadly school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that killed 26 people, including 20 children.

Appearing on Fox News, Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, was asked by host Neil Cavuto how "God could let this happen." Here's his response:

It's an interesting thing. We ask why there's violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage? Because we've made it a place where we don't want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability — that we're not just going to have be accountable to the police if they catch us, but one day we stand before a holy God in judgment. If we don't believe that, then we don't fear that. And so I sometimes, when people say, 'Why did God let it happen?' You know, God wasn't armed. He didn't go to the school. But God will be there in the form of a lot people with hugs and with therapy and a whole lot of ways in which he will be involved in the aftermath. Maybe we ought to let him in on the front end, and we wouldn't have to call him to show up it's all said and done at the back end.

Here is video of Huckabee's appearance on Fox News, via Media Matters:

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