COLUMBUS, Ohio - Rick Santorum seemed to question President Obama's Christian values today when speaking about the president to a tea party group.

The "president's agenda" is "not about you," he said. "It's not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your job.

"It's about some phony ideal, some phony theology," Santorum said to applause from the crowd. "Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology."

The former Pennsylvania senator has said he believes Obama is a Christian, and a statement from the campaign stresses that as well, adding that Santorum was talking not about the president's religion, but political ideology.

"The President says he's a Christian and Rick believes that and has even said so publicly many times," National Communications Director Hogan Gidley said in a statement. "Rick was talking about the President's belief in the secular theology of government - and how believing that theology is dangerous because government theology teaches that it's perfectly fine (to) take away our individual God-given rights and freedoms. Our founders wrote the Constitution to protect our individual rights and freedoms, but it's clear that President Obama believes the government should control your life. Rick Santorum believes in the Constitution and will always fight to protect our freedoms."

Although Santorum criticizes the president daily on the campaign trail, this is the first time he has used this rhetoric or said the president has a "different theology."

An August 2010 Pew poll found that 18 percent of Americans believe the president is a Muslim, up from 12 percent the month before he was elected.   Just last month when Santorum was campaigning in Florida ahead of the primary there, a woman called Obama an "avowed Muslim" as she was asking him why Obama is still president.

"I'm doing my best to get him out of the government right now," Santorum said.

"He uniformly ignores the Constitution," he said, not correcting the woman on Obama's religion. "He did this with these appointments over the, quote, recess that was not a recess, and if I was in the United States Senate, I would be drawing the line."

He told reporters afterwards it wasn't his "responsibility" to correct the voter.

"There are lots of people who get up and say stuff in a town hall meeting and say things that I don't agree with, but I don't think it's my obligation, nor should it be your feeling that it's my obligation to correct somebody who says something that I don't agree with," Santorum said.

During the 2008 campaign, a woman asked GOP nominee John McCain a question during town hall and called Obama an "Arab." McCain immediately corrected her, saying, "No, no ma'am, he's a decent, family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is about."