Gretchen Carlson weeps as Huckabee calls for 'prayer in schools'

Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson wept openly on Monday as Fox News host Mike Huckabee called for more prayer in schools and to "quit being ashamed that we believe in God" in the wake of last Friday's slaughter of elementary school children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

On Friday, Huckabee had told Fox News host Neil Cavuto that "we’ve systematically removed God from our schools" and they had "become a place of carnage because we’ve made it a palce where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life."

But on Monday, the ordained Baptist minister insisted that he wasn't "suggesting by any stretch that if we had prayer in schools regularly as we once did that this wouldn’t have happened."

"But, we’ve created an atmosphere in this country where they only time you want to invoke God’s name is after the tragedy," he explained. "But we need to create an atmosphere in this country where morality is not something we discuss only when we have no other place to run, which I'm afraid is the way it goes. We criticize anybody who invokes God's name, except after a tragedy like this."

Carlson found herself being moved to tears by Huckabee's words.

"Exactly, Governor," she replied as her voice cracked. "When I put my children to bed at night, I say, 'God is always with you. When you wake up and you're lonely, know that he's with you.' And yesterday at our church, Governor, it was so moving. They lit a candle for every one of the victims and they honored them. And it was so wonderful to know that if you are person of faith that you have a lot of questions why, but you have something to hold on to."

Huckabee agreed: "I think it's appropriate that we quit apologizing for having spiritual conversation, that we somehow quit being ashamed that we believe in God, and we recognize that it's only thing that keeps us together when there is an inexplicable tragedy like the one we've seen this weekend with so much horror and so much pain."

And so far, God is the only solution the former Arkansas governor has offered to an increasing number of mass shootings in the United States.

After a massacre at a theater in Aurora, Colorado over the summer, Huckabee opined that "[w]e don't have a crime problem, a gun problem or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem. And since we've ordered god out of our schools, and communities, the military and public conversations, you know we really shouldn't act so surprised... when all hell breaks loose."

And on Friday, he maintained that additional gun control measures -- like banning the type of military-style, urban-warfare assault rifle used to murder 20 school children in Connecticut -- was not an answer.

"Ultimately, you can take away every gun in America and somebody will use a bomb," he said. "When somebody has an intent to do incredible damage, they’re going to find a way to do it."

Watch this video from Fox News' Fox & Friends via Mediaite, broadcast Dec. 17, 2012.