WASHINGTON (ABP) — Although the newest GOP presidential candidate is gaining lots of positive attention from the leaders of the Religious Right, he is not involved in a local church and says he won't talk much about his faith on the campaign trail.
Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson reportedly told a South Carolina campaign audience Sept. 10 that he is not a member or regular worshiper at any church near his home in the upscale Washington suburb of McLean, Va. He also said he would not be comfortable discussing his faith regularly on the campaign trail.
“I guess I'm one of those people who feel a little uncomfortable getting too inside your person and personality, but I understand it's necessary,” Thompson said, according to the Spartanburg, S.C., Herald-Journal. “I'm doing the best I can with it, because I don't hold myself out to be a perfect person. I've not always met the standard that I've set for myself, but I know that I'm right with God and I'm right with the people I love, and the people I love are right with me.”
He later told reporters, according to the Bloomberg news service, “I attend church when I'm in Tennessee. I'm in McLean right now,'' adding, “I don't attend regularly when I'm up there.”
The status of Thompson's religious beliefs and practice has been the topic of speculation and investigation since March, when a U.S. News & World Report story quoted James Dobson as praising Thompson's social positions but questioning his personal faith.
“I don't think he's a Christian. At least, that's my impression,” Dobson said. Although a spokesman said the reporter had mischaracterized the Focus on the Family founder's words and later issued a statement “clarifying” that Dobson was simply saying he hadn't seen Thompson effectively communicate his faith, the magazine's editors stood by the quote.
A Thompson spokesman, meanwhile, responded to inquiries about the candidate's religious affiliation by saying he had been baptized into the Churches of Christ. The group — the conservative wing of a tradition that also produced the mainline Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) — is made up of independent local congregations that cooperate in a limited way for educational and missionary purposes. They teach that baptism is essential to the salvation process and emphasize active involvement in a local church.
The biographical information that Thompson's office provided for a directory during his last term in the Senate described his religion as being Church of Christ. After the Dobson dispute, The Christian Chronicle, a Churches of Christ-affiliated publication, reported that Thompson had been baptized at the First Street Church of Christ in his hometown of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., but found no records of any current Church of Christ membership by Thompson.
It also reported that Thompson's mother is now a member of a Church of Christ in suburban Nashville, Tenn., and that the candidate had been seen worshiping with her there.
Despite Dobson's comments, many social conservatives dissatisfied with the GOP field's current front-runners have anxiously awaited Thompson's long-delayed entry into the contest. Among the Christian leaders who have spoken most glowingly about a potential Thompson candidacy is Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He has repeatedly compared the former senator, actor and lobbyist to Ronald Reagan, and he told the Boston Globe earlier this year that support for Thompson is spreading “like a prairie fire” among social conservatives.
After Thompson's official announcement that he would run became imminent, Ethics Daily, an internet publication affiliated with the Baptist Center for Ethics, asked Land about his support for Thompson given his questionable churchmanship. Land told the agency that Thompson attends Vienna Presbyterian Church in Vienna, Va., “on a regular basis” with his wife, Jeri Kehn.
But Ethics Daily reported Sept. 6 that the pastor of the church, which is affiliated with the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA), said he had only seen Thompson at worship services there rarely and that Kehn attends more often. Vienna is a Washington suburb adjacent to McLean.
An assistant for Land said he was traveling and not available for comment.
Thompson and Kehn, who is his second wife, were married in 2002 in a United Church of Christ congregation near Chicago. The UCC is the most liberal of the mainline Protestant denominations and is not associated with the tradition from which Thompson's Churches of Christ or the Christian Church have emerged.
Whether Thompson — who has a strong voting record in opposition to abortion rights and gay rights — will be acceptable enough to rally religious conservative voters remains an open question. Despite his voting record, he has done lobbying work for the abortion-rights group Planned Parenthood. He also opposed an amendment to the Constitution banning same-sex marriage nationwide, saying that Congress should not make that decision for state legislatures.
Some conservatives have also eyed Thompson suspiciously for his strong support, while in the Senate, for the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform law. Some Religious Right groups opposed the law because they feared its restrictions could limit the effectiveness of lobbying groups for conservative causes like opposing abortion rights.
A handful of religious conservatives expressed significant doubts about Thompson's bona fides on the issues many evangelicals see as paramount.
“The problem I'm having is that I don't see any blood trail,” Rick Scarborough, a Southern Baptist minister who heads the Texas-based Vision America group, told the Associated Press. “When you really take a stand on issues dear to the heart of social conservatives, you're going to shed some blood in the process. And so far, Fred Thompson's political career has been wrinkle-free.”
Thompson's campaign did not return request for response by deadline for this story.
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Read more:
Dobson backtracks on remarks questioning Thompson's faith (4/3/07)