On his video blog John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute posted an op-ed entitled "Religious Tests, Bigotry, and the Race for the White House." In the piece, the constitutional attorney contends it is wrong for people to oppose Mitt Romney simply because he is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon religion.

Whitehead says the Constitution clearly prohibits a religious test. "The Constitution is really clear. We're not to have religious tests for office," he states. "That's spelled in Article VI of the Constitution. The reason we have that is, is that America is for everybody."

But David Barton, founder and president of WallBuilders, says Whitehead's assertion is completely ridiculous and a complete rewriting of Article VI. Voters who oppose Romney because he is Mormon, says Barton, do not need to be intimidated by Article VI -- which he believes is the intent of the current effort.

"Article VI has nothing to do with Romney's faith anymore than it had anything to do with Kennedy's faith," states the Christian historian. "It has to do only with preventing the establishment of a national church, and citizens are free to use religion or any other criteria they want in choosing whoever they want for president."

According to Barton, Article VI is a limitation only on the federal government -- not on the rights of individual citizens. "It was one of the clauses to make sure that there was no national denomination," he explains. "So if the federal government can't have a religious test -- such as the federal government [saying] you have to all be Mormons, or Anglicans, or Baptists, or Methodists, or whatever -- then there's no chance of having a national church."

The WallBuilders founder argues that, under the Constitution, citizens are welcome to apply religious tests anytime they wish. "As a matter of fact, citizens are expected to do that," he says. "That was part of the debates in the constitutional ratification -- that the federal government is prohibited from imposing a religious test, but citizens are certainly able to do that if they want to."

Barton is also critical of a new documentary slated to be released next month called Article VI: Faith, Politics, America, which also argues that there is a prohibition against a religious test.