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By Lloyd Mackey
"BY THE way, I'm not Episcopalian. I'm Baptist."
That was John McCain talking: the same fellow who handily won the Republican Florida American presidential primary yesterday (Tuesday, January 29).
He made that statement last summer, to an Associated Press reporter, after a political rally in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
In my modest view, that "clarification" will probably have won him a couple of million votes, if he becomes the Republican 2008 presidential nominee.
Further, I would submit that McCain's gains come at a cost to Mike Huckabee, the genial former Southern Baptist pastor who had earlier won in the Iowa primary. And Huckabee, in turn, likely won support from such as Ron Paul and Fred Thompson, who both attracted a bit of interest earlier, among evangelical Christian Americans who wanted the closest thing possible to a true-blue, red hot fundamentalist in the White House.
It is a case, I would suggest, of the big fish swallowing the small fish, in the process of strategizing to survive in the diversity-infested presidential race.
But why should being a Baptist make a difference in American presidential politics anyway? And what difference does it make on the Canadian political scene?
The answer to the first question is that, especially in the more conservative American states, the "Baptist" label is one of the religious lowest common denominators for voters of most major ethnic groups. The details are more complex, but the basic premise prevails, I believe.
McCain grew up Episcopal (Anglican, as we Canucks would say) in the Washington, DC area and has often allowed himself to be identified as such. Fact is, however, that his wife and grown kids are Southern Baptists -- members of North Phoenix Baptist Church in Arizona, where he is a senator. He, too, attends NPBC, a Southern Baptist megachurch of 3,000 with a pastoral staff of 21, headed for the past 13 years by Dan Yearcy.
The second question, about the Canadian scene, I will try to answer later, under the topic of "anti-choice".
Firstly, though, it is likely worth noting that McCain is not alone among seniors (he is 71), in either United States or Canada, who have been connected with two, three or even four brands of Christianity.
And the reasons for his being a Baptist adherent likely related to questions like convenience, family, fellowship and pastoral care. His own personal Christian commitment, whatever it may be, could likely be practiced in any one of a dozen denominations. So, in that sense, he is likely an unhyphenated evangelical -- like Stephen Harper, John Manley or Brad Wall, the new premier of Saskatchewan.
McCain carefully noted, in a South Carolina interview: "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 on the issue."
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In a sense, Carolyn Bennett, a Toronto area Liberal MP who is a family physician by practice, partially answered the question about whether American religion impacts on Canadian politics.
Bennett was one of four guests last week on Michael Coren's show on Crossroads Television. The discussion was about Alberta Conservative MP Ken Epp's private member's bill proposing stronger penalties against people who murder women who are carrying unborn children.
The bill, as it happens, is framed in such a way as to differentiate between abortion and the killing of a pregnant woman. Its proponents take great pains to enunciate that it is not intended to discount a woman's right to choose, something which is well established in contemporary law. Further, they would suggest, this is a pro-choice bill because it recognizes the gravity of killing an unborn child that a mother has chosen to carry to term.
Bennett does not buy that premise for a minute, and stated so, on Coren's show. She made clear her belief that Epp's bill would, if properly investigated, be found to have its origins among powerful "anti-choice" leaders in the United States.
In so doing, for what it was worth, Bennett was not only tarring Epp with the "anti-choice" brush, but fellow Coren panellist Derek Lee, as well. Lee, another Toronto area Liberal MP, is on the pro-life side of the abortion fence and, on the show, supported Epp's bill.
Bennett's language is common in the debating practices on hot-button moral and social issues -- on both sides of the issues, I might say.
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Where the rub comes, is in the attempts of abortion rights people (and I am using the term with which they self-identify) in arguing that there is a vast American conspiracy. The nature of that conspiracy, it is argued, is that it results in millions being expended to influence Canadians on issues generated somewhere in Texas or Colorado.
It has been my experience that Canadian pro-life people listen at times with some care to the issues as presented by American social conservative advocates. But, by the time the issues get to Ottawa, they are thoroughly Canadianized. That process includes recognition of the reality that certain civil and human rights perspectives, which are not so well codified in the United States, are a part of the scene north of the border.
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Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006). He can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.
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