Kathryn Lofton on John McCain’s “rhetoric of righteousness“:
The strident—near stunning—focus of his religious ardor has been to his nation. You won’t find McCain singing Baptist hymns. You won’t hear him weigh out the meaning of the Episcopal sacraments. You won’t find him doing these things because he doesn’t need them, nor does he (by all public practice and proclamation) want them. He has all the ritual and power, holiness and community he could want. Often McCain draws on images of Theodore Roosevelt’s frontier as his virgin paradise, a place where men followed the strenuous life to messianic effect. These men, the men and women who pursue such new lands and new struggles, are McCain’s parish, and their devotion is his ritual practice. His religion is the civil religion of America. “You know,” he explained at this year’s convention, “I’ve been called a maverick; someone who marches to the beat of his own drum. Sometimes it’s meant as a compliment and sometimes it’s not. What it really means is I understand who I work for. I don’t work for a party. I don’t work for a special interest. I don’t work for myself. I work for you.”
Read the full essay.
And: read Lofton’s “How now, creationist?” at The Immanent Frame.
