John Kasich: ‘Some Religious Leaders Have Given Faith a Bad Name’

Worshipping God and loving your neighbor are key to Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s faith, he said Tuesday.

“Look, some religious leaders have given faith a really bad name,” Kasich, a Republican, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “It’s like who’s sleeping with who. That’s not what religion is for me.”

“You love your neighbors. You love yourself. You start treating people like they matter, regardless of who they are.”

Kasich’s new book, “Two Paths: America Divided or United,” hit stores on Tuesday, April 25.

“Religion for me is, you worship God. He gives you humanity,” Kasich said on the morning talk show. “You love your neighbors. You love yourself. You start treating people like they matter, regardless of who they are.”

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Both “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough and Kasich served in the House of Representatives during the ’90s and early 2000s.

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It’s important to get involved in community projects to create change, Kasich said in the interview.

“If you are drug-addicted or if you’re mentally ill … it is easy for politicians to run over people like that,” Kasich said. “You have to have some people in both parties that say ‘No, you can’t do that.'”

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Kasich ran on the Republican ticket in the 2016 presidential primaries. His new book is his fourth book to be published.

“It’s true, as he [Kasich] emphasizes, that the book is about more than Donald Trump,” The Columbus Dispatch noted Tuesday. “But aside from Kasich himself, the president clearly is a central figure.”

Related: Trump’s Newfound Faith in the Oval Office

Kasich did not endorse Trump for the presidency; neither did he attend the Republican National Convention in Ohio last year, to jeers from many people on the right.

“Even in a chapter on his faith, Kasich called Trump’s stunning victory not so much a sign of political or social upheaval in America but evidence of the decline of a nation that has lost its moral compass,” The Columbus Dispatch’s Darrel Rowland wrote.

Kasich stayed in the presidential race until the GOP candidates dwindled down to just Donald Trump and himself.

“I saw Trump’s reckless entreaties as a weakening of our shared American values — even more so, a coarsening of our shared American values,” Kasich wrote in his book.