Without a Prayer

It all had to end sometime, though, and that sometime might be now. Nervous, white, sexually inhibited Protestants with fourth-grade educations are becoming a smaller and smaller share of the country's population, and the Christian right is increasingly frustrated with the Republican Party's failure to transform America into a fundamentalist caliphate. (Forget about abortion: After eight years of Republican rule, Christians can't even put up the Ten Commandments in Alabama without someone bitching about it.) But the last straw just might come down to one Republican politician's personal idiosyncrasies. All the party needed was one more pious, Scripture-quoting, hair-spray-soaked whore to hold this thing together for another four years, and instead they got John McCain. And John McCain may break up three decades of GOP Jesus-flogging simply because he is too afraid to get his forehead wet. Wouldn't that be something?

North Phoenix Baptist is an ideal spiritual hiding place for a reluctant believer. For anyone with private doubts about the religious right, or even religion in general, the place's architectural setup — with its thousands of seats and its giant twin TV monitors for reading hymn lyrics and its stoned-looking crowd of sun-damaged, elderly white retirees in golf garb — is the perfect venue to hunker down and take your lumps once a week. Even I blend in, crouched a dozen rows up from McCain and his wife, Cindy, on the right side of the auditorium, mouthing the words to a half-hour of excruciating hymns.

Dan Yeary, the pastor of North Phoenix Baptist, doesn't bear much resemblance to the torch-bearing bigots of the Ted Haggard/Jesus Camp variety. He's a low-key Southwesterner with a kindly smile who seems to recognize that his aging congregation prefers the weak beer of mild spiritual encouragement to the 10-alarm chili you find in the witch-hunting Bible Belt. But on this day, he has crafted a sermon that seems to be aimed directly at the casual believer who thinks going to church once a week makes him holy. "We're not talking about paying dues at a country club," Yeary preaches. "This isn't about ritual. This is about a relationship."

Yeary talks about how important baptism is as a symbol of one's submission to God, "the first act of obedience." Then he tells a story about Abe Lincoln — another famously vacillating Republican claimed by both atheists and Christians alike. The story involves a pastor who took Lincoln to hear another famous pastor speak. When the fiery oratory was over, Lincoln's friend asked him what he thought of the sermon.

"Lincoln said it was fine," relates Yeary. "The friend said, 'Fine? Just fine? Why?' And Lincoln answered, 'He did not ask me to do anything great for God.' "

Yeary carefully avoids looking over at the conspicuously unbaptized McCain. "That's what I want," he says. "I want to be part of people who take God seriously."

I watch McCain throughout the sermon. When the story is over, he flashes his creepy Count Chocula smile — the same one he pulls out, teeth bared, after his That's not change we can believe in! stump line — but otherwise doesn't react. Everybody on our side of the chapel is glancing over at him.

In a way, this scene says everything you need to know about McCain's dilemma. The man is a relic from a previous era of conservatism, when privacy was sacrosanct and public expressions of religiosity were considered vulgar and in bad taste. McCain comes from a generation of American men for whom religion was a ticket you punched once a week, a low-effort symbol of conformity to go with your two-car garage, your sorority-girl wife and your weekly golf game with the fellas. The whole braying-to-the-moon, born-again Promise Keeper act perfected by the Bushes and Huckabees of the world is as alien to his sensibility as an Iron John man-poetry retreat. Sitting here in the North Phoenix Baptist pews, he has a look on his face like he'd just as well suck a cock as do an altar call. It's one of his most likable qualities.