John McCain’s “Zeus Worship” Re-Visited
(Wrote this piece originally during the 2000 election season.)
By John Lofton, Editor
“Zeus worship.” What a discerning and incisive analysis. I wish I had thought of it. But, I didn’t. The phrase belongs to Marvin Olasky, a teacher of journalism at the University of Texas and Editor/Publisher of “World” magazine. Olasky has also counseled George W. Bush and is credited with Bush’s theme of “compassionate conservatism.”
In any event, in a recent column in the Austin (Texas) “American-Statesman” newspaper Olasky contrasted the views of Bush and Sen. John McCain and how some in the media have reacted to both men.
For openers, Olasky refers to a 1998 Tom Wolfe novel (“A Man In Full”) in which the main character realizes the meaninglessness of prosperity without purpose. But, he converts not to Christianity but to faith in Zeus. Olasky says that Bush’s initial encounters with East Coast media folk went well. But, when Bush began to speak more publicly of his Christian faith, the mood among some of these reporters changed.
Enter John McCain. Olasky says he, already personally popular among journalists, “displayed a message with Bush’s upside but without the Christian albatross. Instead of talking about faith-based charities, McCain emphasized patriotism. Instead of stressing the Biblical virtues of faith, hope and charity, McCain spoke of honor, duty, and other classical virtues — good things all, but not a substitute for the Bible. McCain, no threat to journalists’ personal peace and affluence, gained the covers of news magazines and garnered votes.
“It would be pushing it too far to talk of the religion of Zeus trumping the religion of Christ. McCain’s no polytheist. But a lot of liberal journalists have holes in their souls. Some of them grew up in nominally Christian homes but never really heard the Gospel; now they are looking for purpose in their lives but have no understanding of God’s grace. Others know more but don’t want to repent. So, McCain’s emphasis on the classical virtues gives them a post- Clinton glow without pushing them to confront their own lives.”
Olasky comments specifically on the pro-McCain views of neo-conservatives Bifi Kristol and David Brooks of the “Weekly Standard” magazine and “NY Times” columnist Frank Rich. Kristol/Brooks have said, approvingly, that for McCain “cultural renewal does not depend on a religious revivaL” And Brooks, who Olasky says “has faith only in Zeus-like strength,” has said: “It almost doesn’t matter what great task government sets for itself as long as it does some tangible thing with energy and effectiveness.”
Frank Rich, says Olasky, is “a case study in running away from the Bible” having praised McCain because he would not speak at a Christian Coalition conference, and for being proud that he had the support of the homosexual Log Cabin Republicans. Rich hailed McCain for being the first major GOP Presidential candidate in years who was not running as “a pious moral scold” and because there was no chance “he’ll be policing anyone’s sex life.”
Olasky concludes: “It’s sad that leading journalists are acting as proselytes in the religion of Zeus rather than as tough reporters. The question now is whether the American public has become so unmoored from Biblical understanding that, by Jove, it will believe in Zeus McCain.”
When Olasky appeared on the Public TV “NewsHour” program with David Brooks, he reiterated his “Zeus religion” thesis. And he noted that all Brooks had done in a “Newsweek” column was attack him and ridicule his argument. He never answered it. Brooks sat silent, smiling, but saying nothing.
Well, the primaries are over. We now know that “Zeus McCain” did not win. And there is much in McCain’s own book which validates Olasky’s analysis. McCain’ s book, which he wrote with Mark Salter — a “family memoir” he calls it — is titled “Faith Of My Fathers” (Random House, 1999). And, early on, on a page by itseIf this great old Christian hymn by Frederick William Faber is quoted: “Faith of our fathers, living still, In spite of dungeon, fire and sword; 0 how our hearts beat high with joy Whenever we hear that glorious word! Faith of our fathers, holy faith! We will be true to thee till death.”
But, alas, the “faith” demonstrated in this book, and in McCain’s campaign for the Presidency, is less of a Christian/Biblical faith than it is a faith his fathers, a kind of ancestor-worship.
At one point (pg. 51), McCain notes, approvingly, that the relationship of a sailor and his children is, in large part, “a metaphysical one” where “you are taught to consider their absence not as a deprivation, but as an honor. By your father’s calling, you are born into an exclusive, noble tradition. Its standards require your father to dutifully serve a cause greater than his self-interest, and everyone around you, your mother, other relatives, and the whole Navy world, drafts you to the cause as well. Your father’s life is marked by brave and uncomplaining sacrifice. You are asked only to bear the inconveniences caused by his absence with a little of the same stoic acceptance. When your father is away, the tradition remains, and embeffishes a paternal image that is powerfully attractive to a small boy, even long after the boy becomes a man.”
McCain tells how (pg. 56) at the US Naval Academy he was “a notoriously undisciplined midshipman, and the demerits I received were almost enough to warrant my expulsion.” While there he “embarked on a four-year course of insubordination and rebellion” (pg. 120).
He says. (pgs. 71, 74) that his Dad, though “devout,” didn’t go to church regularly because of his profession: “My father didn’t talk about God or the importance of religious devotion. He didn’t proselytize… .1 often felt that my father’s religious devotion was intended in part to help him control his drinking… .Like his father, my father swore a lot, and subordinates often referred to him as ‘Good G—dam McCain.”
McCain says (pg. 100) that his mother often despaired over the quality of her childrens’ education saying, even today, when asked about this, that they were “raised to be completely ignorant.” He notes (pg. 104) that his father was an avid reader of Toynbee and Spengler and that he loved Poe, Kipling, Dante, Tennyson and Lewis Carroll. His favorite poem was Oscar Wilde’s ode to the British Empire, “Ave Imperatrix.”
As a boy, McCain says (pg. 106) he was most impressed by reading Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Booth Tarkington and tales of King Arthur’s Court. He praises one poem by Stevenson because it was “a brave declaration of self- determination,” the “perfect motto for all who lived a life according to their own lights,” a “moving tribute to the lives of strong-wified, valorous men like my grandfather and father.” He adds that he read this poem as an exhortation to “be your own man” and this “influenced my childhood aspiration to find adventures, pursue each one avidly, and, when it had run its course, fmd another” (pg. 107).
McCain says that at each new school he attended “I grew more determined to assert my crude individualism” (pg. 108). At Episcopal High School he was part of a small cadre “who satisfied our juvenile sense of adventure by frequently sneaking off-campus at night to catch a bus for downtown Washington, and the bars and burlesque houses on 9 Street” (pg. 113).
As a Navy flier, McCain says: “In fact, I enjoyed the off-duty life.. .more than I enjoyed actual flying. I drove a Corvette, dated a lot, spent all my free hours at bars and beach parties, and generally misused my good health and youth” (pg. 133). On most Sabbath days, the Lord’s Day, he “went to the movies and had a nice dinner afterwards” (pg. 154). He says he and his squadron “enjoyed a reputation for hosting the most raucous and longest beach parties of any squadron in the Navy” (pg. 160).
When flying over Vietam, McCain says that like most pilots he was “a little superstitous” and preferred that all pre-ifight tasks be performed in the same order as previous missions, “believing an unvarying routine portended a safe flight” (pg. 177).
When he became a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, and was in solitary confinement, McCain says he “prayed more often and more fervently than I ever had as a free man” (pg. 206). But, it was “resisting, being uncooperative and a general pain in the —” that proved to be “a morale booster” (pg. 207).
Echoing the philosophy of the Godless, anti- Christian French Revolution, McCain says that while a POW he missed his American freedom, an America which was “the advocate for all who believed in the Rights Of Man” (pg. 255). He adds that as a POW he learned “the truth” that “there are greater pursuits than self-seeking,” that “glory belongs to an act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, your principles, to the people on whom you rely, and who rely on you in turn… This is the faith my commanders affirmed, that my brothers-in-arms encouraged my allegiance to… .all I had left of my dignity was the faith of my fathers. It was enough” (pg. 257).
In conclusion (pg. 349), McCain recalls the last conversation between his father and grandfather. He says the latter told the former: “Son, there is no greater thing than to die for the principles — for the country and principles that you believe in.” Says McCain: “And that was one part of the conversation that came through and that I have remembered down through the years.” He adds, regarding this conversation, that “when I needed it most, I found my freedom abiding in it.”