Following up on yesterday’s item, the Politico’s Jonathan Martin asked yesterday why John McCain’s claim about being a Baptist matters.
The notion of being identified with one Protestant denomination but attending services at another doesn’t strike me as terribly odd or really all that uncommon.
Is the fuss in South Carolina because McCain pointed out that he’s a Baptist in a heavily-Baptist state? Or is it just because McCain so rarely talks with any detail about his faith?
Either way, there are untold numbers of Christians who attend the church that they find most compatible for a variety of reasons. That an Episcopalian would find more fulfillment in a local Baptist church and thus go there with his family is something that is by no means limited to politicians.
That’s true, but I think Jon’s missing some of the key details that make this story interesting. There’s a real controversy here — and an example of an entirely self-inflicted wound.
If an Episcopalian attends services at a Baptist church, that’s routine. But McCain, who has always identified himself as an Episcopalian, told a reporter in South Carolina that he’d given up on being an Episcopalian in order to become a Baptist. This, just three months after McClatchy did a report on McCain’s religiosity in which he was identified as an Episcopalian. In fact, as recently as May, McCain’s own staff told the AP that the senator is an Episcopalian.
And yet, over the weekend, unprompted, McCain told a reporter, “By the way, I’m not Episcopalian. I’m Baptist.” Given what we know, it looks as if McCain may have claimed a new affiliation simply in the hopes it would give his campaign a boost.
What’s more, it looks as if McCain now knows he’s made a blunder — and doesn’t know how to get out of it.
“There’s been some talk about my religious persuasion,” said the Arizona Senator, referring to a weekend report by the Associated Press that McCain said he was a Baptist although he has long identified himself as an Episcopalian.
“I was raised in the Episcopal Church and attended high school, it was a high school called Episcopal High School. I have attended North Phoenix Baptist Church for many years, and the most important thing is that I’m a Christian, and I don’t have anything else to say about the issue,” McCain said.
In May, McCain’s an Episcopalian. In June, he’s an Episcopalian. In September, he’s a Baptist, and has been for years. Asked to explain how this can be, he says, “I don’t have anything else to say about the issue.” He clearly made a denominational switch, but now he doesn’t want to talk about it. Why not?
Keep a couple of things in mind. First, the point of this story has nothing to do with theology — no one cares which faith tradition McCain embraces. The point is that the senator seems to have undergone a sudden conversion to Baptism in South Carolina, where Baptists are the majority. What prompted the conversion? McCain has nothing else to say on the subject. Hmm.
Second, McCain brought this up. This isn’t an instance of reporters hounding a candidate about a private matter; in this case, the senator raised the issue on his own, unprompted. And now he’s kind of stuck.
McCain also noted that his family has been baptized into their church, but he has not. I suggested yesterday that’s there’s a theological problem there, prompting some comments that I was off-base. For what it’s worth, my understanding is in line with Ed Kilgore’s:
Well, you’d think anyone who’s been attending a Baptist Church for 15 years might have caught wind of the fact that the denomination, as its name suggests, believes rather adamantly that baptism is necessary for salvation, a reasonably important “spiritual need” by most measurements.
And no, it wouldn’t cut any ice with his fellow-Baptists if it turns out that McCain, like most Episcopalians, was baptized via sprinkling as an infant. Any kind of Baptist I’ve ever heard of holds that only a “believer’s baptism” (i.e., at an age of consent) through full bodily immersion is valid. That’s why their theological ancestors in Europe were contemptuously dubbed “Re-baptizers,” or “Anabaptists.”
Meanwhile, some religious conservatives recognize McCain’s mistake.
“When I read that I said ‘You gotta be kidding,’ ” said David Jeffers, a lay preacher and author of “Understanding Evangelicals: A Guide to Jesusland,” who said by not being baptized by immersion, Mr. McCain is out of step with the church he attends in Arizona.
“It’s your words, sir, that’s why we’re contending with it,” he said, adding the issue is not whether Mr. McCain feels more comfortable as a Baptist. “We have a problem with you trying to say ‘I’m a Baptist’ while you’re in the middle of the heartland of Baptist country.”
Complicating Mr. McCain’s explanation is the fact that, despite his church attendance, he never bothered to correct the record during the last 15 years in several authoritative sources, including the Almanac of American Politics and the newly released CQ’s Politics in America 2008, both of which list him as Episcopalian.
His campaign didn’t return a message seeking comment yesterday.
It’s hard to know what reporters are going to pick up on, but this is a genuine story. McCain claimed a very recent conversion, which he can’t explain and doesn’t want to talk about. If the media picks up on this, as it should, the senator will have a fairly serious problem on his hands.
