“When we start using religion as a bludgeon in politics, we start questioning other people’s faith, we start using religion to divide, instead of bring the country together, then I think we’ve got a problem,” Obama told Des Moines’s local NBC affiliate, Who TV.

Obama was responding to recent accusations that he is engaged in a “war on religion” through recent actions such as the contraception mandate. Faith communities protested the White House’s decision to require employers to provide contraception as part of their health insurance coverage, and the GOP presidential candidates decried the president as hostile to religious freedom.