Special news report –John McCain’s faith

 

 

One Sunday in 1971, the North Vietnamese Communists decided to stop the secret church services at the prisoner of war camps. They came into Room 7 and dragged John McCain out. “Bud Day jumped up and sang ‘God Bless America.’ It was singing to the heavens, so to speak,” Orson Swindle recalled. “The Vietnamese dragged Day out and someone else jumped up.” Swindle and others started singing loudly, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” provoking a platoon of bayoneted soldiers to come in. McCain was beaten for several weeks.

Yesterday, McCain’s heroic battles ended on this earth. McCain was diagnosed in July 2017 with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. He died in his home at age 81. His daughter Meghan McCain tweeted, “Today the warrior enters his true and eternal life, greeted by those who have gone before him, rising to meet the Author of All Things.” He will be buried at the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery. He will be remembered as quite a fighter who did not wear his faith on his sleeve. However, his experiences as a Prisoner of War focused his heart on the things above.

McCain was also involved in the only POW-run Christmas service. Day finally got an English Bible from the Vietnamese for thirty minutes. With a collection of tiny pieces of lead broken off pencils used during their interrogations, McCain copied the Nativity story. On Christmas night December 25, 1971, the POWs put on their service with the Lord’s prayer and carols punctuated by McCain reading the Nativity story. At the end, they all sang “Silent Night.” Many wept.

Other prisoners of war described McCain’s spirituality as combining a humbleness and dependence on God with a steely resolve to not let God be manipulated by the Communists nor the POWs themselves. His commander Day put it this way, “We told the guys that they could pray but that they shouldn’t pray to be released or be saved from their situation.” McCain later explained his thinking in his memoir, “God wasn’t responsible for me getting shot down, and he wasn’t responsible for getting me out of captivity.” Day was concerned that some prisoners’ resolve would be weakened or have false hopes as a result of praying the wrong way. McCain also wanted to keep God sacred from manipulation. However, one can imagine how this practice might have led to McCain’s closedness about his faith and his inner thoughts. Later, the rough and tumble of politics also roused his considerable capacity for anger and distrust. The end result was that McCain is not an easy person to really get to know.

Perhaps for that reason, Senator John McCain didn’t connect to many evangelicals on a deeply personal level and often appeared like he didn’t like the ones that he did know. His campaign for the presidency in 2008 gave up trying to make the Senator personal friends with evangelical leaders (and didn’t do a very good job when they tried).

McCain’s bad boy personality also grated on many evangelicals. At the time, McCain was happiest with a rat pack in Las Vegas shooting craps and watching the professional boxing fights while fingering the mountain of lucky charms that he carried around. At any one time, he might have carried lucky items ranging from a feather, a compass, rock, penny, pen or shoes. To observers walking down the Las Vegas street to the churches seemed to set McCain’s teeth on edge.

As a result, many evangelicals were undecided, unenthused, and wary of the Senator during the 2008 presidential race.

 

The history of the rocky road

McCain’s experiences in Vietnamese Communist captivity shaped his character and his faith. They also may have contributed to his enigmatic personality. Father Alex B. Aronis, who counseled McCain and other prisoners after they were freed, said that most of the prisoners told him that they owed their survival and mental health to a deep relationship to God. McCain, who was a member of the “Saints” squadron on the USS Oriskany when he was shot down, said he was certainly no saint. He recalled that he learned to how to pray, regretfulness for his foolishness and maturity in prison camp.

Appointed as chaplain to the captive Americans, McCain drew upon memories of his father praying for hours and his Episcopal school training to teach and spiritually lead the other prisoners in his cell. Every Sunday after a morning meal, nicknamed “sewer grass,” the prisoners would listen for the clanks of the dishes being washed. Then, they waited expectantly for McCain’s cough followed by three more coughs, which in their code was the letter “C” for church. McCain’s cellmate Orson Swindle told me, “We would then stop and in each cell we would engage in our religion in whatever way we did. We started with the Pledge of Allegiance and then recited the Twenty-third Psalm, using the first person plural, as in “Yea, though we walk in the valley of the shadow of death,” to emphasize that we were all before God together.”

McCain and other prisoners were not necessarily very religious, but their experiences drew them into communion with God and each other. A few became born-again Christians, others had an intensification of faith for the situation. McCain’s Episcopal upbringing was intensified.

After his release from prison camp, McCain served in the navy in several capacities, including naval liaison to Congress. There he developed a taste for politics.

When he decided to run for Congress in 1981, close Washington friends like Senator John Tower (R-Texas) gave him advice, funds and lobbied Republicans like Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater to help McCain. He learned that conservative Arizona wanted a candidate to represent their pro-life views. So, he was pro-life. However, domestic values issues were never the center of his attention. In 1986, McCain was elected to the U.S. Senate.

In 1989 he supported his friend and mentor (a “familial” relation McCain has written) John Tower in a bitter confirmation battle for Secretary of Defense. Tower, who had teetotaler parents but was something of a bon vivant around Washington, DC, ran into allegations, with his ex-wife leading the charge behind the scenes, of drunkenness and extramarital sexual liaisons, according to Tower confidant Ken Towery. McCain was infuriated over how the Christian right, led by Moral Majority co-founder Paul Weyrich, jumped on Tower and caused his nomination to be defeated.

The Senator, who as a naval liaison to congress used to keep Tower and other Senators well-supplied with Johnnie Walker Black, thought that critics were unfairly and hypocritically singling out Tower. In his memoirs he wrote, “The sins Tower was accused of were hardly Washington novelties.” McCain’s rocky road with evangelicals dated at least to this incident. He later revealed his wound by recalling that Weyrich was “a pompous self-serving son of a bitch.”

McCain continued to vote pro-life in the U.S. Senate. He supported evangelicals on issues of religious freedom overseas. Gary Bauer, a former candidate for president, remembered that he first met McCain at that time. “He was quite helpful,” Bauer recalled. However, McCain kept a personal distance from evangelicals in Washington, DC, whether from a lingering anger or from an old-fashioned sense of privacy. Bauer said he believed the later and found it a refreshing contrast to the egocentric confessional culture. “We have been living in an age where politicians tell us every intimate thought that they have, which we discover that some of that stuff doesn’t always correspond to facts.”

However, McCain also joined with other moderate Republicans to try to take the abortion issue off center stage.

In 1996, McCain led a charge to change the GOP platform that called for a human life amendment to the U.S. Constitution. McCain lost the fight but wasn’t finished fighting the social conservatives.

In 1998, he prepared for his run for the presidency by announcing that he was for overturning Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. McCain thought he could outflank George W. in the primaries of Ohio and California. His campaign also spread derogatory stories about Bush’s conservative supporters.

In response, some unknown Bush supporters in South Carolina spread rumors about McCain’s character and his family, claiming that his adopted child was actually his child born out of wedlock. The complete fabrication, to which the Bush campaign denied any connection, was followed by a McCain explosion.

 

Family

One thing is certain about McCain was that in the inner core of his emotions resided his family. In the Washington Post, a close family friend Betsy Bayless said that Cindy McCain “has said many times that she’s the only one he trusts implicitly.” After endorsing McCain in 2000, Bauer rode on the Senator’s campaign bus and “it struck me how important his family was. That was the reason that he got so angry.” In fact, Bauer said that glimpses of the inner workings of McCain’s heart came out when the Senator was defending his family, friends and honor. “He has been through some baptisms of fire and was willing to stand with me in similar situations. However, his reaction to an attack on his family was so angry then that it led to something unfortunate.”

With the Ohio and California primaries coming up. Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, suggested that the Senator use his anger to “stick it to the Christian right,” said one consultant working with the campaign then. McCain thought drawing out his sword would be a good idea. Bauer saw the angry speech that McCain had prepared on the airplane. He recalled, “I was very interested in getting a parachute.”

On February 28, 2000 in a gym in Virginia Beach only a few miles from Christian Coalition headquarters, McCain let loose his long pent-up anger. He denounced the Christian Coalition’s Pat Robertson and Moral Majority’s Jerry Falwell as “self-appointed leaders” who were like “union bosses” shaking down their supporters for money and power. He accused them of practicing “the politics of division and slander” to “smear the reputations of my supporters,” “agents of intolerance,” and money grubbers. Reaction was predictably fierce.

McCain decided to up the ante. He told reporters traveling with him that the religious right was an “evil influence.” Even evangelical supporters of the Senator like Bauer warned that they could not support the Senator’s attacks.

Faced with an unstoppable firestorm that threatened to destroy his campaign, McCain tried to fob off his attacks as “a joke.” He argued that he wasn’t against all evangelicals and indeed had praised Prison Fellowship’s Chuck Colson and Focus on the Family’s James Dobson (praise that Bauer had suggested). But the damage was done and within two weeks McCain’s campaign petered out. It took years for McCain to get over his anger at evangelicals.

In 2005 Jerry Falwell reached out to McCain to see if they could heal their breach before the presidential campaign season got under way. By the spring 2006 McCain was willing to forget, though perhaps not to forgive. He told an interviewer in April 2006 that he no longer thought Falwell was “an agent of intolerance,” though he declined to say what the pastor was an agent of. The Senator said, “We agreed to disagree on certain issues, and we agreed to move forward. I believe that the ‘Christian Right’ has a major role to play in the Republican Party.” McCain seemed to imply that he was dealing with the Christian right because of their power, not because he liked them.

A month later McCain gave the commencement speech at Falwell’s Liberty University. The speech was notable for its lack of personal warmth toward Falwell, religious phrases or social conservative issues. He came closest to an apology by reflecting on disagreements among Americans: “It should remain an argument among friends…I have not always heeded this injunction myself, and I regret it very much.” Falwell told the Lynchburg News and Advance, McCain “is in the process of healing the breach with evangelical groups.” McCain was the first Washington leader to issue a statement of condolence following Falwell’s death in May 2007. Falwell’s widow Macel said she would vote for McCain in the Fall election.

At the same time that he was talking with Jerry Falwell, McCain was maneuvering to defang evangelical activist organizations and their media counterparts. The Senator’s signature campaign reform legislation, popularly known as the McCain-Feingold Act, prohibited non-profits from campaigning sixty days before a federal election. Groups like Robertson’s Christian Coalition and pro-life groups typically made their weight count by a flurry of pre-election advertising comparing candidates’ records on life issues.

McCain also seemed to target Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network and other television channels with a bill that that would uncouple Christian broadcasting channels from cable television program packages. The bill would have made all cable television a-la carte pay-per-channel. Most Christian broadcasters saw the proposed legislation as a death arrow aimed at them. Their pitch for funds came during programs, and they believed that not many people would pay beforehand.

By 2006 McCain was also involved in a contentious fight for moderate immigration reform. Evangelicals started to fissure over this issue. In Arizona and other states with numerous illegal immigrants, evangelical Republican leaders like Randy Pullen, then chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, fiercely attacked McCain. Others like Luis Cortes, the head of Nueva Esperanza in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, found an ally in McCain. But by 2006 the issue of amnesty for illegal immigrants, Cortes said, had “created a fissure between white and Hispanic evangelicals.”

McCain also lost his closest personal friend who was a social conservative. The unexpected death of Jeff Groscost, Arizona Speaker of the House, left McCain’s intimate circle with a gap that cost him understanding and advice about evangelicals later.

Nevertheless, McCain’s rapprochement with evangelicals rapidly took place. He needed them to get the presidential nomination.

In early 2007 McCain called Rick Warren, Franklin Graham, John Hagee and other evangelical leaders. He attended ministry and church dedications and hired evangelical outreach staffers. In September 2007, he publicly for the first time pointed out that he was a Baptist. In fact for fifteen years the McCains had attended North Phoenix Baptist Church which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Senator began to lightly lace his rhetoric with a faith language. He called America a “Christian nation” and allowed that he would prefer a Christian president over someone of a different faith. He reiterated to several audiences his conviction that “life begins at conception” and his almost 100% pro-life voting record. McCain also spoke at Hagee’s annual Night for Israel.

However, in June 2007 his evangelical outreach blew up. The chief managers of the outreach quit, claiming that McCain’s campaign leaders only wanted to manipulate the evangelical voters and cared for them not at all. Fortunately for McCain, the outburst occurred during a general meltdown of the campaign, so the criticisms were lost in the uproar. The evangelicals were also not united, and McCain went onto win the primaries, often with more evangelical support than was given to Huckabee. By the beginning of 2008, a few evangelical leaders were ready to support McCain.

The Pentecostal prosperity preacher John Hagee was one of the first big name leaders to come over to McCain. On February 27^th McCain flew to San Antonio, Texas to get Hagee’s endorsement. However, criticism of Hagee rose almost immediately. Many evangelicals didn’t like Hagee’s prosperity gospel nor his habit of making judgmental pronouncements against Catholics, Jews and African Americans. They called the McCain camp to warn that Hagee had a history. McCain was stunned and stopped talking about the endorsement the day after he received it.

Perhaps, the senator thought that the controversy would subside as McCain announced other evangelical endorsements, but they were slow in coming. Bauer, then (and now) leading American Values, endorsed McCain but warned that McCain that more trouble might be coming. Catholic Republicans were even more outraged. Then, Hagee’s comments on Jews during the Holocaust ignited a firestorm.

In a sermon on the Book of Jeremiah Hagee added a comment on the Holocaust: “God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.” Critics said that Hagee was justifying the killing of six million Jews. McCain folded faster than Hagee could run to the microphones. He summarily dismissed Hagee’s endorsement. Two days later, he rejected the endorsement of Parsley who made some controversial criticisms Islam.

In March, McCain met in New Orleans with the Council for National Policy, an invitation-only group of social conservative power brokers. McCain didn’t talk about social issues or his faith until prodded during the question and answer session. McCain pointed his critics to his “record in twenty-four years of pro-life voting and advocacy.” He also championed home schooling, state referenda to define marriage as between a man and woman, and countering pornography. McCain was more reluctant to let the group rummage around into his own personal religious beliefs.

Direct mail guru Richard Viguerie observed that many didn’t find McCain very forthcoming about his heartfelt values. McCain told the familiar story of a North Vietnamese guard drawing a cross in the dirt to explain his soft treatment of McCain. But Viguerie was not alone in saying that the story, which the audience had heard many times before, was a thirty year old story that didn’t reveal anything about McCain’s deep inner convictions in 2008.

McCain let his staff know that he didn’t want to make any more church appearances. His campaign manager Rick Davis outlined a strategy around three issues: the economy; Iraq; and energy. Conspicuously, the social issues were left off the list. The strategy was to win moderates and independents while trying to retain social conservatives through a below the horizon effort through surrogates. McCain would be seen in public at factory floors, coffee shops but not churches.

McCain and his wife also refused to make their personal charitable giving public, causing a spate of rumors about donations to Scientology and the Mormons. In total, the McCains gave at that time about $160,000 to charity during a year with Cindy McCain accounting for most of the giving. Most of the money was channeled through their foundation, whose records the campaign released. In 2006 and 2007, most of the McCain giving went to schools which their children attended. A substantial amount went to secular organizations that cleared landmines and surgically fixed cleft palates. The foundation gave $4000 a year to the McCain’s church.

At town hall meetings, McCain did explain his support for social issues, pledging in Michigan in May to prosecute sex trafficking and internet pornography and make religious freedom a priority for American diplomacy.

McCain also met with conservative Roman Catholic and Jewish leaders. In Mexico, he received a blessing in Mexico at the Basilica of the Virgin Guadalupe. In Philadelphia, he reassured Priests for Life with Catholic surrogates like U.S. Senator Sam Brownback and former Vatican ambassador Jim Nicholson. Senator Joseph Lieberman hosted McCain at meetings of Republican-leaning Jewish leaders.

By July, evangelical leaders were beginning to wilt at the prospect of an Obama presidency. Their distrust of McCain seemed less important. However, the senator’s distrust of the health-and-wealth prosperity preachers flared anew with the political rise of Donald Trump.

 

Battling Trump in recent times

As Congress reconvened in January 2015, McCain achieved his longtime goal to become chairman of the Armed Services Committee, with the power to advance his national security and fiscal objectives under a $600 billion military policy bill. He considered the post second only to occupying the White House as commander in chief.

McCain was one of the few powerful Republican voices in Congress to push back against President Donald Trump’s values.

In his end-of-life memoir, Mr. McCain expressed repugnance at Trump’s seeming admiration for autocrats and disdain for refugees. “He seems uninterested in the moral character of world leaders and their regimes,” he wrote of the president. “The appearance of toughness or a reality show facsimile of toughness seems to matter more than any of our values. Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity.”

His disapproval of Trump perhaps peaked this last July, after the president and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia met privately in Helsinki, Finland, and then participated in an extraordinary joint news conference there. McCain declared, “No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.”

Yet, McCain voted to confirm most of Trump’s appointments. He joined the Senate’s 54-to-45 majority to confirm the selection of Neil Gorsuch as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He also voted for all but two of . Trump’s 15 cabinet selections and eight other administration posts requiring Senate confirmation.

McCain was a prolific writer and speaker.

He wrote six books with his aide, Mark Salter, all with themes of character, courage and honor. Besides his 2018 memoir, they were Worth the Fighting For (2002), Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life (2004), Character Is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember (2005), Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them (2007) and Thirteen Soldiers: A Personal History of Americans at War (2014).

On October 17, 1917, McCain addressed the midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he will be buried. He praised the importance of “sacrificing for something more important than yourself” and a commitment to “do the right thing, thanks or no thanks.”

“Even in the worst of times – and they come for most of us – you’ll know that to serve this country is to serve its ideals – the ideals that consider every child on earth as made in the image of God and endowed with dignity and the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is a noble cause. It is your cause, and it’s worth living and dying for…

Godspeed. Semper Fidelis. Fair winds and following seas.”

 

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