I received the McCain Christmas story in an email but didn't read it until I noticed some blogs talking about it. And some folks are asking the ready yet naive question of how a Christian could be a Vietnamese soldier.

I don't leap to the conclusion that the soldier was himself a Christian, at least not consciously. 'Though, these days, hardly anyone admits any other kind.¹

That doesn't excuse him in the least from his actions as a soldier, nor is it intended to maintain any integrity for Christians.

But it seems statistically implausible that the soldier was a Christian:

After the end of the French rule and Vietnam division in mid-1950s, Catholicism declined in the North ...

In 1955 approximately 600,000 Catholics remained in the North after an estimated 650,000 had fled to the South. Christianity in Vietnam, Wiki

Everyone knows, of course, that if the soldier was a Christian, he would have been a Roman Catholic.

I'm not saying the soldier wasn't acting as an instrument of God's grace.

Christian or no, God's grace is the only explanation for the soldier's compassion towards McCain.

But, if not a Christian, then the soldier's inspiration came "second-hand," mediated through his impression of McCain, an American, a Westerner, perhaps with French occupation still fresh in his mind.

Does the story change much if the soldier wasn't a Christian?

Maybe he incurred less personal risk. Maybe the story becomes more about McCain than about the soldier.

---

¹ God, I just love the straw man in that traditionalist piece! A better presentation of Rahner's beloved "Anonymous Christianity."