John the Baptist story hits locally

September 21, 2007 By

john mccainIn the aftermath of GOP presidential candidate John McCain’s statement that he is a Baptist and not an Episcopalian, the Associated Press followed up and did something of a clarification story by getting some more comments from the always-media-accessible Arizona politician:

AIKEN, S.C. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Monday that questions over whether he identifies himself as a Baptist or an Episcopalian are not as important as his overarching faith. “The most important thing is that I am a Christian,” the Arizona senator told reporters following two campaign stops in this early voting state.

The comment came after a weekend during which McCain corrected an Associated Press reporter who asked him how his Episcopalian faith plays a role in his campaign and his life. While it’s well-known that McCain and his family for years have attended the North Phoenix Baptist Church in his home state of Arizona, the senator had consistently referred to himself in media reports as Episcopalian.

OK, other than that first paragraph, there is nothing new in this story. But a more interesting story is coming out of The Charlotte Observer‘s columnist Dannye Romine Powell about Baptist identity and how this plays in the Bible belt:

I don’t care whether Republican presidential candidate John McCain is an Episcopalian or a Baptist.

But the implication in Monday’s paper that he’d been caught at something — outed while trying to pass as an Episcopalian — hit a nerve.

Why do we diss Baptists?

Powell’s story is one of church social rankings, avoiding the term “Baptist” and whether one’s church parking lot is filled with “Mercedes and BMWs” or “Fords and Chevys.” It’s a great local perspective that I missed when I first saw the McCain story roll out, but it is a question that should be asked and applied, at least regionally, if not nationally.

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Filed Under: Anglicanism, Evangelicals, Journalism, People, Politics, Religion
  • http://web.mac.com/richard_barrett Richard Barrett

    Just a style point regarding the first sentence of your post–”Episcopal” is not a noun, it’s an adjective. The noun is “Episcopalian”.

    Richard

  • http://showard1.blogspot.com Samuel J. Howard

    I don’t care because of social status or theology (I’m Catholic and think Baptists and Episcopalians are both wrong.) I care because of the question of whether he changed his affiliation for purposes of political expediency.

    I don’t think he did this — but it didn’t look good at first — but if he’s been going to the Episcopal Church for many years.

    But — there is a question about how serious he is about his faith if he doesn’t see a signigant difference between Baptists and Episcopalians.

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  • Chris Jones

    Mr Howard,

    there is a question about how serious he is about his faith if he doesn’t see a significant difference between Baptists and Episcopalians

    I don’t think so. One of the characteristics of the Episcopal Church is that it has always accomodated a wide variety of both belief and practice. Some parishes are quite similar to Roman Catholicism, with elaborate liturgy and a “high” doctrine of the sacraments; but others are unabashedly Protestant, with a more symbolic view of the sacraments. Some of these more “Protestant-style” Episcopal parishes can be quite similar to Baptists and other Protestant denominations.

    If that is the sort of Episcopalian that Sen McCain was, it is not that big a leap to the Baptists. He may have found that the Baptists preached the same faith he was hearing in his Episcopal Church, but with greater fervor and effectiveness. If so, the move indicates more, not less, seriousness about his faith.

    Perhaps as a Catholic, you are used to thinking of Episcopalianism as “Catholic Lite”; but there’s a whole wing of the Episcopal Church that is nothing of the kind.

  • http://goodwordediting.com Mark Goodyear

    Hmm. I work for an ecumenical retreat center. We’re funded by a Baptist and taught by a Presbyterian and an Episcopalian (with guest speakers from churches ranging from Catholic to Church of Christ). We always try to create a program where the guests and the speakers come from different traditions.

    By far, the constituency we serve most? Episcopalians.

    Sure, the denominations have their differences in theology. But the similarities far out number the differences. It isn’t surprising that journalists have trouble understanding how this can work. But I’m always surprised when Christians do.

  • Martha

    Perhaps, like the Episcopalian Rev. Anne Redding who considers herself to be both a Muslim and a Christian, Senator McCain considers himself to be both an Episcopalian and a Baptist?

  • Chris Bolinger

    Powell’s “story” is an opinion piece and should be treated as such. Excerpts from the piece:
    * I grew up Baptist, and I learned early on that we are tolerated only by other Baptists.
    * An Episcopalian colleague from Charleston tells me that growing up she never knew a single Baptist. “They didn’t drink. They didn’t dance. What fun were they?”
    * Even at Myers Park Baptist, there’s a long-running debate about dropping “Baptist” from our name in hopes of attracting those who might otherwise feel squeamish.

    Funny. We’re thinking about dropping “Evangelical” from ours.

    Clearly, Powell has run into quite a few people who are fairly ignorant of the various Baptist denominations and who make sweeping generalizations about Baptists. How often does the press perpetuate stereotypes about Baptists? About “evangelicals”? About home-schoolers? About any other group that is not well-represented in the press room?

  • dpulliam

    Thank you Richard for catching my sloppy mistake.

  • BobN

    Sure, the denominations have their differences in theology.

    Those differences used to be considered quite important — wars were even fought over what appear to us to be fairly arcane matters of theology. Today, it seems, all that has been replaced with a much more intellectually mushy, amorphous “Christian” theology (not that that’s a bad thing) with just one simple test: how anti-gay is your faith (THAT is a bad thing, at least to my mind).

  • Joseph Fox

    In the rural South 50 years ago it was not unusual for the Baptist Church in a community to meet every other Sunday and for the Methodist Church to meet on the alternate Sundays and for most folks in the community to participate in both Churches. In those days it was more important to be Christian than a member of a particular church. And yes, some of us do refer to those as the “Good Ol’ Days even though we had a lot less in terms of material goods.

  • Lee

    McCain’s North Phoenix Baptist Church in Arizona is relatively silent on its Baptist identity. I searched the NPBC website for information on what convention it belonged to, but could find no information on that (according to Harvard’s Pluralism Project, it’s Southern Baptist. Also, none of the pastors on staff at the church include in their bios any information about what seminary they may have studied at, or where they were ordained.