The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

McCain's religion problem

If McCain has a weakness, it is a lack of real resolved support from the Christian Right (also including conservative Catholics). Pragmatic conservatives will line up behind him because the thought of Obama as President is terrifying (which it is). Neo-cons and national defense conservatives will get in line because of his heroic military service and support for the liberation of Iraq and the broader war on terror. But Christians may need a better reason to show up other than to keep Obama out of the White House. There are not a ton of millionaire corporate executives, but the rank-and-file evangelical voter is the footsoldier in the election, and if they aren't motivated, they won't show up.

Reports are starting to surface that Huckabee is quietly at the top of McCain's VP short list.

Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and defeated contender for the GOP presidential nomination, is currently at the top of John McCain's short list for a running mate. At least that's the word from a top McCain fundraiser and longtime Republican moneyman who has spoken to McCain's inner circle.

I like Huckabee and his unapologetic stance as a Christian running for President, rather than a politician looking for Christian votes. I am not sure he will do much to placate the fiscal conservatives, Christian Right leaders or rally independents, but he will draw in rank-and-file Evangelical voters. If the masses don't show up to cast ballots in place like Ohio and Michigan, McCain is sunk. There aren't enough independent voters who will support him to make up for the loss of Evangelicals, especially with Obama in the race who will also draw independents at a much greater rate than Hillary would. The man who wins in November will be the one who appeals to the center the best while at the same time rallying his base. If McCain can't do that, we are facing four years of a far-left Obama Presidency with a Democratic congress and a shifting of the Supreme Court. McCain can't win without the evangelical vote and Huckabee may be his best bet to draw them in.

Another important voter block are conservatives Roman Catholics (by conservative I mean actually believe in what Rome teaches, as opposed to cultural Catholics). They have been none too happy with McCain for his refusal to disassociate himself from John Hagee. Some of Pastor Hagee's comments about Roman Catholics have been considered intemperate. So today, rather suddenly, rather than McCain distancing himself from Hagee, Hagee apologized for his comments.

"In my zeal to oppose anti-Semitism and bigotry in all its ugly forms, I have often emphasized the darkest chapters in the history of Catholics and Protestant relations with the Jews," Hagee wrote. "In the process, I may have contributed to the mistaken impression that the anti-Jewish violence of the Crusades and the Inquisition defines the Catholic Church. It most certainly does not."

Hagee has often made references to "the apostate church" and the "great whore," terms that Catholics say are slurs aimed at the Roman Catholic Church. In his letter, Hagee said he now better understood that the Book of Revelation's reference to the Catholic Church as "the apostate church" and the "great whore" are "a rhetorical device long employed in anti-Catholic literature and commentary."

He stressed that in his use, "neither of these phrases can be synonymous with the Catholic Church."

Oddly Hagee's position towards Rome was a pretty common stance towards Rome historically. This from the 1689 London Baptist Confession:

The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the church, in whom, by the appointment of the Father, all power for the calling, institution, order or government of the church, is invested in a supreme and sovereign manner; neither can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof, but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ, and all that is called God; whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.

We aren't permitted to talk that way anymore. In fact now we are called to apologize for it for the sake of political expediency. I am not convinced that the office of the papacy is the anti-Christ, but it certainly is in that spirit as a man-made exalting of the office of pope in place of the mediation of Christ alone. It is a concern that the appearance is that Hagee is changing his stance on a major theological issue because it is causing trouble for a man he supports politically. It strikes me as no coincidence that after all these years as a pastor, now he repudiates his position just as we enter the thick of the general election campaign.