Via the Brody File, we learn that a John McCain adviser is insisting that McCain thinks that "using your faith for election is wrong." If that's the case, good for McCain.
It's an odd turn of events -- after the Democrats being berated for not talking openly about their religion, and the Republicans' decades-long attempt to hijack and monopolize it -- now the two Democratic candidates can't stifle the God-talk and the Republican is squirming.
McCain is obviously torn between trying to reach his party's base and spurning the God-talk. On the Trinity Broadcasting Network last year, he discussed how even though he was raised Episcopalian, he now attends a Baptist church. But, as Dan Gilgoff caught last week at BeliefNet, McCain's not a member of the Baptist church he's attended for the last 17 years, because he hasn't undergone the water baptism required for membership.
But to try to reach what he perceives to be his party's skeptical base, he's done an about-face on his "agents of intolerance" remark about Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, has said that America is a Christian nation, and has attempted to make amends with the factions of the religious right who have been ridiculously dismayed by the McCain-Feingold legislation and his insufficient homophobia. (Cliff Schecter chronicles many of McCain's desperate religious right outreach efforts in his new book, The Real McCain.)
But as the ground on politics and religion is shifting beneath McCain's feet, it seems like he can't get his footing. On the one hand, he's tried the previously reliable GOP tactic of dancing with Dobson, without realizing that Dobson's infantile whining and impossible litmus tests have made his imprimatur irrelevant. And did Joe Lieberman whisper in his ear that the Armageddon lobbyists at Christians United for Israel could order some foot soldiers out in November?
It sure seems to be the case, as McCain got cozy with its president, John Hagee, and one of its more prominent regional directors, Rod Parsley. (And surely calling Parsley a "spiritual guide" was the sort of pabulum compliment public officials throw around in public just to be polite -- surely he doesn't believe that "sowing a seed" into Parsley's church would bring him miraculous riches.
