Media Misstates McCain Relationship to Controversial Pastors

This headline on ABC News caught my eye:

McCain Pastor: Islam Is a 'Conspiracy of Spiritual Evil'

Would you not conclude that the person referred to as "McCain Pastor" is McCain's actual pastor - the leader of his church? It's not. They're referring to Rod Parsley, a pastor who has endorsed McCain, like John Hagee, but not the pastor of the church that McCain attends or has ever attended. It's a disingenuous link at best.

Despite his call for the U.S. to win the "hearts and minds of the Islamic world," Sen. John McCain recruited the support of an evangelical minister who describes Islam as "anti-Christ" and Mohammed as "the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil."

McCain sought the support of Pastor Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, Ohio at a critical time in his campaign in February, when former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was continuing to draw substantial support from the Christian right.

At a campaign appearance in Cincinnati, McCain introduced Parsley as "one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide."

Campaign aides positioned Parsley right behind McCain for photographers, apparently unconcerned about Parsley's well-established denunciations of the Islamic faith in a book "Silent No More" and on DVDs of sermons about Islam.

Islam is an anti-Christ religion that intends through violence to conquer the world," Parsley says on the DVDs reviewed by ABC News.

"America was founded with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed," Parsley says, "and I believe Sept. 11, 2001 was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore."

Parsley's views and his connection to the McCain campaign are now beginning to show up on Arab Web sites and newspapers.

Al Moheet, a regional Arabic Web site operating in Egypt, carries the story with a picture of McCain and the headline: "McCain's Spiritual Adviser Calls for the Destruction of Islam."

"If there is a McCain presidency, he will start with a serious handicap in the Arab world," said former CIA intelligence officer John Kiriakou. "And the handicap is that it is already assumed in Muslim countries that they will not get a fair shake from a McCain administration," said Kiriakou.

While we're told that we can't considered Barack Obama's actual pastor's (for 20 years) words when considering whether to vote for Obama, we're also told that we must consider the words of pastors who have not been spiritual mentors but have simply been public endorsers. In this case, Parsley's comments about Islam are supposed to make us wary of McCain. I've got lots of reasons to be wary of McCain, but the fact that Muslims don't like him as much as Obama isn't one of them.