Colorado candidate Ken Buck spoke against separation of church and state

Last week, Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell raised eyebrows by questioning the separation of church and state. Now liberal blog Think Progress has dug up video of Colorado's Ken Buck, who is challenging Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), arguing against the division last year.

"I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state," Buck said at Republican Senate candidates' forum. "It was not written into the Constitution. While we have a Constitution that is very strong in the sense that we are not going to have a religion that's sanctioned by the government, it doesn't mean that we need to have a separation between government and religion. And so that, that concerns me a great deal." As an example of what concerned him, he said that President Obama had decided to call the Christmas tree in the White House a "holiday tree." (In fact, that was an email rumor -- the Obamas had a "Christmas tree" in 2009.)







The First Amendment does not explicitly call for the "separation of church and state"; the phrase comes from Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that the Constitution required "building a wall of separation between Church & State."