Rick Santorum became the first Republican presidential candidate to visit the Memphis area in recent weeks with a Sunday morning appearance at Bellevue Baptist Church, reports the Commercial Appeal.
Santorum, a Catholic and a former Pennsylvania senator, arrived with his wife, Karen, and three of their children, and was seated in the front row of the Memphis mega-church, which is one of the largest Southern Baptist churches in the South. He seemed to enjoy an early hymn, nodding his head and swaying, then embracing his wife.
Bellevue pastor Steve Gaines brought Santorum and his wife onto the stage for a prayer. With the couple’s image featured on several of the arena-like sanctuary’s jumbo TV screens, Gaines quoted from I Timothy, verse two, and mentioned abortion and immorality.
“Our church is very concerned about our nation and we just believe we should turn back to God,” Gaines said in his prayer.
At one point, two parishioners placed their hands on Santorum’s shoulders, and most of the congregation raised their hands in a symbolic laying on of hands for the former Pennsylvania senator.
The appearance at one of the South’s largest Southern Baptist churches comes on the same weekend The New York Times examined Santorum’s devotion to the kind of “highly traditional Catholicism” that has historically caused tension between Baptists and Catholics.
According to The Times: “Unlike Catholics who believe that church doctrine should adapt to changing times and needs, the Santorums believe in a highly traditional Catholicism that adheres fully to what scholars call ‘the teaching authority’ of the pope and his bishops.”
The visit also comes as Santorum is working to lock down his advantage in the South over national Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, whose own Mormon faith has been a factor in his struggle to build a stronger following among religious conservatives, particularly those in the South.