{"id":143,"date":"2008-08-12T10:54:53","date_gmt":"2008-08-12T10:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/08\/mccain-praises-georgia-for-ado.html"},"modified":"2008-08-12T10:54:53","modified_gmt":"2008-08-12T10:54:53","slug":"mccain-praises-georgia-for-ado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/08\/mccain-praises-georgia-for-ado.html","title":{"rendered":"McCain Praises Georgia For Adopting Christianity As Official State Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

If one isn’t thinking about the American political campaign, it might seem oddly out-of-the-blue that in the course of criticizing Russia’s action in Georgia, John McCain noted that Georgia is “one of the world’s first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion.”<\/a>
\nOf course our Founding Fathers believed that having official state religion was a bad thing, not a good thing. But one can assume that McCain saw some political gain with American evangelical Christians by making this comment. That line simultaneoulsy enabled McCain to convey:
\n1) I think having Christianity as an official religion is a fine idea in general
\n2) This is just like the Cold War when the forces of Christianity are at war with the forces of Atheism
\n3) I view the protection of Christians from attack worldwide as an important goal<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If one isn’t thinking about the American political campaign, it might seem oddly out-of-the-blue that in the course of criticizing Russia’s action in Georgia, John McCain noted that Georgia is “one of the world’s first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion.” Of course our Founding Fathers believed that having official state religion was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nMcCain Praises Georgia For Adopting Christianity As Official State Religion - Steven Waldman<\/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\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/08\/mccain-praises-georgia-for-ado.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"McCain Praises Georgia For Adopting Christianity As Official State Religion - 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He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. 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