Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum sparked a media firestorm on Saturday when he accused President Barack Obama of promoting a "phony theology...not a theology based on Bible."

To many, his accusation smacked of the old smear--whispered through right-wing email chains--that Obama is a covert Muslim. In response to such concerns, Santorum publicly expressed his confidence in Obama's Christian faith. "If the president says he's a Christian," he assured reporters, "He's a Christian."

But what Santorum means by "Christian" is a bit different from the way most Americans understand it. He may acknowledge that the President worships Jesus Christ, but he regards Obama's Christian faith as polluted by secular and liberal ideals. And not just Obama's. Santorum believes that most of mainstream American Protestantism has been corrupted in both doctrine and practice.

Corrupted by whom?

In the summer of 2008, as Barack Obama and John McCain vied for the White House, Santorum delivered a speech to Catholic students from Ave Maria University. He warned them of a terrible threat: Satan had targeted the United States of America.

According to Santorum, the "Father of Lies" had lusted after America's soul ever since the Republic was founded, but our stalwart ancestors resisted his efforts. In these latter days of depravity and moral decay, however, Satan was winning.

First, Satan wormed his way into the Ivy Tower, using the doctrine of moral relativism to seduce "the elites." Then he and his new minions set their sights on a juicier target.

"What we saw this domino effect," Santorum explained, "Once the colleges fell and those who were being education in our institutions, the next was the church."

By the church, he meant the large Protestant sects that dominate the United States--Episcopalians, Methodists, and so on. In Santorum's view, Satan and company had reduced mainstream Protestantism to a shambles. "It is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it," he charged, unintentionally echoing the sentiments of more than a few Catholic popes over the centuries.

But Santorum's own Catholic Church was not immune to Satan's influence. As the pedophilia scandal broke in 2002, Senator Santorum angrily decried the villains responsible. "It is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm," he stormed. Warning that Catholic seminaries had been corrupted by secular culture, he called for a "new evangelization" within the Church to combat the infestation.

With the nation's great religions under siege, Santorum warned of one more domino that was finally toppling under the cascade of satanic corruption in late 2008. The last bastion of righteousness was, believe or not, the government.

"People in political life get elected by ordinary folks from lots of places all over the country where the foundations of this country are still strong," Santorum explained, perhaps alluding to his old district in Pennsylvania, "The body politic held up fairly well up until the last couple of decades, but it is falling too."

A few months later after his speech, the last domino fell. Obama won the election, and "cultural liberals" swept into Congress.

In 2012, Santorum aims to right the dominos, starting with the White House. He regards the effort as much more than a political campaign. "This is not a political war at all, or a cultural war," he explained, "It is a spiritual war."

According to his view of America, two religions vie for the nation's soul. On one side stand traditional Catholics and evangelicals. On the other stands the "phony theology" of President Obama and all those who reject Santorum's right-wing version of Biblical morality. One side stands for God. The other stands for you-know-who.

Michael Wolraich is the author of Blowing Smoke: Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-Job Fantasies about the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas, and Turn Junior into a Raging Homosexual.