{"id":76,"date":"2008-08-18T18:22:57","date_gmt":"2008-08-18T18:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/cross-drawn-in-the.html"},"modified":"2008-08-18T18:22:57","modified_gmt":"2008-08-18T18:22:57","slug":"cross-drawn-in-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/cross-drawn-in-the.html","title":{"rendered":"Cross Drawn in the Dirt – Gate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Waldman has been covering the Cross Draw in Sand-Gate scandal<\/a> that is heating up.  It was the first time I had heard the story and found it moving. It would be absolutely nuts if it turns out to be some sort of hybrid memory.  Here is Waldman’s post:<\/font><\/p>\n


Andrew Sullivan is offering a detailed account<\/font><\/a> of how similar the McCain story is to that offered by Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsen and then later popularized by Christian leaders Chuck Colson and Billy Graham. Sullivan also points out other suspicious changes:<\/p>\n

\n

The story changed from the guard using a sandal to the guard using a stick.<\/p>\n

At Saddleback, McCain talked about a single guard being the protagonist. The same guard loosened his ropes and then later sketchd the cross in the dirt. In McCain’s 1999 book, these were two different guards at two different prison camps.<\/p>\n

McCain’s first writings about his time in captivity didn’t mention the story at all, so he’s asked his readers for evidence of McCain offering that story prior to his 1999 book (when he was gearing up for a presidential run).<\/p>\n

Several contributors to the comment thread on my first post have pointed to this rather stunning New York Times piece from 2000 in which McCain tells the story – <\/a>but about someone else!<\/p>\n

Many years ago a scared American prisoner of war in Vietnam was tied in torture ropes by his tormentors and left alone in an empty room to suffer through the night. Later in the evening a guard he had never spoken to entered the room and silently loosened the ropes to relieve his suffering. Just before morning, that same guard came back and re-tightened the ropes before his less humanitarian comrades returned. He never said a word to the grateful prisoner, but some months later, on a Christmas morning, as the prisoner stood alone in the prison courtyard, the same good Samaritan walked up to him and stood next to him for a few moments. Then with his sandal, the guard drew a cross in the dirt. Both prisoner and guard both stood wordlessly there for a minute or two, venerating the cross, until the guard rubbed it out and walked away. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t know where all this is headed. It makes me very uncomfortable questioning someone’s POW camp memories. It’s possible this did happen but that McCain originally viewed the moment has being largely about the goodness of the guard, rather than his own faith. That would be a campaign misdemeanor, not a felony. But if this turns out to be substantially altered or made up, it will be absolutely devastating to McCain<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Waldman has been covering the Cross Draw in Sand-Gate scandal that is heating up.  It was the first time I had heard the story and found it moving. It would be absolutely nuts if it turns out to be some sort of hybrid memory.  Here is Waldman’s post: Andrew Sullivan is offering a detailed account…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-08"],"yoast_head":"\nCross Drawn in the Dirt - Gate - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/cross-drawn-in-the.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cross Drawn in the Dirt - Gate - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Steve Waldman has been covering the Cross Draw in Sand-Gate scandal that is heating up.  It was the first time I had heard the story and found it moving. 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Paul B. Raushenbush is the moderator of the Progressive Revival blog and the Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University. .An ordained American Baptist minister, Rev. Raushenbush speaks and preaches at colleges, churches and institutes around the country including the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., The Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, and the New America Foundation. Rev. Raushenbush has served at Seattle First Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Columbia University and as College and Young Adult Minister at The Riverside Church in New York City. He has appeared on ABC World News Tonight and is a repeated guest on CNN. He has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post and is a contributing editor for Beliefnet.com. His first book, Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths (HCI) was released in the Fall of 2004. He is the editor of the 100th Anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book Christianity and the Social Crisis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c In the 21st Century (HarperOne). His work at Princeton includes strengthening the interfaith community on campus. He is the Co-Director of the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at The Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University. Rev. Raushenbush studied religion at Macalester College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he graduated with distinction.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/praushenbush"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}