...Despite his affiliation with the Episcopal Church, McCain, attended the Southern Baptist-affiliated North Phoenix Baptist Church in Phoenix for at least 17 years Baptist News Global said. He never officially joined the congregation or got baptized there. In a 2008 interview, the church's then pastor, Dan Yeary, said he discussed baptism with McCain but respected his faith tradition.
...In the early 1990s, Pastor Yeary talked with McCain on video about his experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for more than five years and how his faith help sustain him.
"He just came up and sat in my office for a good two hours and talked about how prayer and his faith sustained him in that setting," Yeary said. "It was a wonderful day. From that moment on, John and I forged a friendship. It is not the kind where we talk every week or even every month. ... [But] I would tell anyone who asks me it has been a privilege to serve as their pastor."
Yeary also praised him for his maverick approach to politics and life in general.
"I think John reaches out to everybody," Yeary told BNG. "He's not afraid to spend time with people who have radically different views. I think that's smart. That's intelligent."
...
Russell Moore, president of the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission also had only praise for McCain on Twitter.
"John McCain was a hero. He was tortured for his country, and stood up to his captors with courage. Ever since, he's stood up for the ideals of democracy and freedom at home and around the world. His death is an incalculable loss for our nation," wrote Moore.
The late senator is expected to lie in state Wednesday in the Arizona State Capitol on what would have been his 82nd birthday ABC 8 News said. A funeral will be held Thursday at North Phoenix Baptist Church where former Vice President Joe Biden will speak.
McCain will also lie in state Friday in the Capitol Rotunda with a formal ceremony in Washington, allowing the public to pay respects. On Saturday, a procession will pass the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and arrive for a funeral at Washington National Cathedral which is part of the Episcopal Church.
Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama are slated to speak at this service.
A private funeral at the Naval Academy Chapel followed by a private burial at the academy cemetery is planned for Sunday afternoon. McCain will be buried next to a Naval Academy classmate and lifelong friend, Chuck Larson, according to his wishes.
...As tributes continue to pour in from around the world for Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona who succumbed to brain cancer at his home on Saturday, many who praised his life as a war hero also remembered the lifelong Episcopalian for his faith.
In a statement on the passing of her father, who was 81, at the time of his death, Meghan McCain alluded to her father's faith and the belief that he is now in heaven.
"My father is gone, and I miss him as only an adoring daughter can. But in this loss, and in this sorrow, I take comfort in this: John McCain, hero of the republic and to his little girl, wakes today to something more glorious than anything on this earth," she wrote before referencing the ending of famed novelist and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle, the seventh and final book in his The Chronicles of Narnia series.
"Today the warrior enters his true and eternal life, greeted by those who have gone before him, rising to meet the Author of All Things: 'The dream is ended: this is the morning,'" her statement ended.
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