McCain’s Religious Test

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Senator McCain is causing quite a stir with his comment to an online religious publication that “the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.” Not only did his “Christian nation” comment catch the attention of Jewish Americans, but the senator took care to offend those of the Islamic faith specifically, insisting to beliefnet.com that he would be reluctant to vote for a Muslim. “I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles,” he said, “personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith. … I just feel that that’s an important part of our qualifications to lead.”

Well, confound it. We’d just started thinking that there might be some logic to a McCain-Lieberman ticket. Mr. McCain has often struggled with the free speech clause of the First Amendment. His McCain-Feingold campaign speech regulations come to mind. His remarks to beliefnet.com reflect a different kind of myopia. It is true that many of the founders were Christians, and that many Christian principles animated their idealism. And even that Christianity was an official religion in some of the states at the time of the founding and even after. But the idea of a religious test for public office is prohibited in Article VI of the Constitution, which, in some of the deepest bedrock in the entire republic, states: “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

Shortly after Mr. McCain’s comments were published on Saturday, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, urged the senator to withdraw them. “Not only were your assertions inaccurate, they were also ill-advised for any candidate seeking to lead a nation as religiously diverse and pluralistic as ours,” Mr. Foxman wrote. In Mr. McCain’s reply, obtained by the Sun, the senator tries to undo some of the damage by broadening his conception of America to one which is “rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition.” Better to have just conceded he misspoke and leave it at that. It would be difficult for any candidate, today or ever, to improve on President Washington’s formulation to the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, that in this country “every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

More broadly, however, it would be unfortunate were the flap over Mr. McCain’s remarks to beliefnet.com to obscure the more salient fact about the current war. Neither the Christians, nor most Muslims, nor the Jews are at loggerheads in this conflict. We are under attack by a violent, extremist strain of Islam and a few bizarre, secular, leftist regimes that give them protection. In this struggle, Mr. McCain has emerged as a hero. He is for a major, sustained military and diplomatic offensive, of the kind to which he offered his own life when the enemy was communism. He understands that commitment can bring victory. Great leaders in this struggle, such as Mr. McCain, are entitled to misspeak on occasion. The strategy he favors in this war deserves support by the broadest coalition.


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