McCain Campaign Clarifies ‘Christian Nation' Remarks

WASHINGTON — Moving swiftly to stamp out a potential political firestorm, the campaign of Senator McCain is trying to clarify the Republican presidential candidate's statements that he would prefer a Christian president and that the Constitution established America as a "Christian nation." "I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, that's a decision the American people would have to make, but personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith," the Arizona senator said when an interviewer for the Web site beliefnet.com asked him about the possibility of a Muslim running for president.

Elsewhere in the interview, which was published Saturday, he said: "I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation."

Mr. McCain later contacted the Web site to say he would vote for a Muslim if he or she were the candidate "best able to lead our country and defend our political values."

Yesterday, his campaign took a step further, issuing a statement from its chief spokeswoman that sought to explain and clarify his remarks, but without retracting them.

"The senator did not intend to assert that members of one religious faith or another have a greater claim to American citizenship over another," the spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, said. "Read in context, his interview with beliefnet makes clear that people of all faiths are entitled to all the rights protected by the Constitution, including the right to practice their religion freely."

She continued: "He also observed that the values protected by the Constitution, by which he meant values such as respect for human life and dignity, are rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. That is all he intended to say to the question, America is a Christian nation, and it is hardly a controversial claim."

Mr. McCain's comments have drawn rebuke from both Muslim and Jewish leaders. "It is a very dangerous and mistaken thing to say," the president of the American Jewish Heritage Organization, Rabbi Perry Berkowitz, said in an interview yesterday. "America is not a Christian nation. It is a multiethnic, multifaith, and multicultural nation, and that is its glory." Mr. McCain, he said, "should be called on it and told he is wrong, wrong, wrong."

Mr. Berkowitz was also not satisfied with the statement Mr. McCain's camp put out yesterday. "I don't know that it really clears it up," he said. He added that the phrase "Judeo-Christian" made him "a little bit nervous" because he said it is often used disingenuously as "political cover" by officials looking to avoid offending Jews.

The statement was met more favorably by at least one Muslim advocacy group that had spoken out against Mr. McCain's initial comments, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper, was quoted in yesterday's Daily News as saying: "That kind of attitude goes against the American tradition of religious pluralism and inclusion." Mr. Hooper, said to The New York Sun yesterday: "We appreciate the clarification, but we would also state that respect for human life and dignity is rooted in Islam and other faiths."

Mr. Hooper added that he hoped that if elected, Mr. McCain "would respect religious pluralism and the American tradition of tolerance and respect" for people of different faiths. He said he would suggest that Mr. McCain meet with Muslim leaders this week.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is a prominent voice on behalf of Muslim interests in Washington, but it has run into legal troubles recently: Federal prosecutors are insisting that it be designated as an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case against five men accused of supporting Hamas, which America has designated a terrorist group. CAIR is objecting to that label and has asked a judge to nullify it.

Mr. McCain, an Episcopalian who says he regularly attends a Baptist church, is trying to resurrect his campaign following the summer departure of several top aides amid fund-raising woes. His critics have called his comments a mark of desperation for a man who once denounced the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as "agents of intolerance." They say he is trying to appeal to Christian voters turned off by two leading Republican candidates, Mitt Romney, who is Mormon, and Mayor Giuliani, a twice-divorced Catholic whose affair with his current wife led to the disintegration of his second marriage.