The man tapped by [crscore]Rand Paul[/crscore] to serve as senior adviser and religious liaison to his presidential campaign is quoted in a new book on the 2016 race expressing doubts about the candidate’s Christian beliefs.
Journalist McKay Coppins quotes Paul campaign adviser Doug Wead in his new book, “The Wilderness,” saying he is unsure what the candidate actually believes.
“My point is, I don’t know,” Wead says when asked by Coppins if he thinks Paul is a Christian believer. “I don’t think we can know. I don’t know if he knows.”
(The Pauls have long been Presbyterian but Rand recently joined a Methodist church in Kentucky, Coppins explains in the book).
The book goes into detail about how Paul — in Coppins’s words — needed a “crash course in conservative Christianity” in order to appeal to the evangelicals in the early caucus and primary states.
Coppins wrote that “the distinct dialect of right-wing born-agains was as foreign to [Paul] as Swahili.”
“To fix this,” the author continues, “Wead assembled a list of creedal buzzwords that would signal to evangelical voters that Rand was one of them — a sort of Rosetta Stone for Evangelicalese. Soon, with some tutoring, Rand was conversational.”
Coppins continued: “As evidence of Rand’s progress, Wead would later point me to a 2014 interview the senator had given in which he recounted his teenage conversion to Christianity. ‘When [Rand] said, “I accepted Christ as my savior,” an evangelical was hearing that he was born again,’ Wead explained. ‘But that’s not what he’s actually saying… In fact, he didn’t even say Jesus is divine. He didn’t say any of that! But that’s what is heard.’
When Paul named Wead a religious adviser in June, the candidate said in a statement: “He is an incredibly influential conservative and evangelical leader, and I look forward to working alongside Doug to solve our nation’s current moral crisis.”
Coppins also describes in his book how Paul, preparing for the campaign, met with Pastor Brian Jacobs in February 2014. The pastor asked Rand if he had met with other prominent Christians like Dr. Russell Moore, Bishop T.D. Jakes, Franklin Graham and Gary Bauer.
“Jacobs continued to rattle off the names of some of America’s most prominent Christian leaders until finally it dawned on him: the senator sitting before him had no idea who any of these people were,” the author wrote.
Jacobs was quoted by Coppins saying of the meeting: “I had to pick my jaw up off the table.”
According to Coppins, Paul explained to Jacobs: “I’ve lived in the Washington bubble for years, and I apologize that I don’t know who these people are. But that’s why I need your help.”
UPDATE: Reached by The Daily Caller, Paul’s campaign released a statement from Wead: “Rand Paul is a great man and a compassionate Christian. I have heard him talk about his faith publicly on multiple occasions, one of which was in an interview with Justin Machacek. In that interview, Sen. Paul makes it clear that he is a born again believer. Nothing I have ever heard him say privately contradicts the idea of his Christianity.”