Steve Chapman, as well as Eugene Volokh, think Romney is hypocritical on the issue of “religious tests” for office.

At issue:

Like John F. Kennedy, who said in 1960 that the presidency should not be “tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group,” Romney said there should be no religious test for this office. “A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith,” he said.
Rejected because of his faith, no. But rejected for his lack of faith? That’s another question. Romney evinces a powerful aversion to skeptics. “We need to have a person of faith lead the country,” he said in February, which sounds like a religious test to me.

I disagree. We should have no Constitutional or legal requirement of religious faith for office. But the voters are certainly entitled to take a candidate’s religious views, or lack thereof, into their decision-making process.

In fact, voters have every right to ask Romney a bunch of questions about what he believes about God; reporters have that right as well and have exercised that right to embarrassing lengths this cycle. A candidate has the choice to answer those questions, as well as the right to say, “that’s private, and that’s none of your business.”

When Romney says, “we need to have a person of faith lead the country,” I have a hard time reading this as anything other than an expression of personal preference, and/or his assessment of what the country needs in a leader right now. He’s not calling for a religious test or legal requirement for the office; the audience that Romney addresses can either say, “yes, we agree,” or say, “no, we don’t need a person of faith, we need a person of competence/vision/whatever.” (Not that faith contradicts any of those other qualities.)