Perhaps the moral of the story is that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) would be far better off avoiding religion as a campaign issue. It's been dogging him for years, and his fall from grace continues.

In 2000, the Arizona senator gambled that denouncing religious right leaders like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson would pay off, and went to Virginia to condemn the TV preachers as "agents of intolerance." The gamble failed; the GOP base was offended; and McCain's campaign never recovered.

More recently, McCain, a life-long Episcopalian, raised eyebrows by telling a reporter, unprompted, "By the way, I'm not Episcopalian. I'm Baptist." In context, it looked as if McCain may have claimed a new affiliation simply in the hopes it would give his campaign a boost.

The senator ran into additional religious trouble in a BeliefNet interview in which he said, "I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation." This despite the fact that the Constitution, which McCain has presumably read, does the exact opposite.

And as if that weren't enough, in the same interview, McCain suggested he wouldn't want a Muslim president.

"I admire the Islam. There's a lot of good principles in it," he said. "But I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith."

Apparently, McCain later realized he'd made a mistake, because the transcript of the interview added, "McCain contacted Beliefnet after the interview to clarify his remarks: 'I would vote for a Muslim if he or she was the candidate best able to lead the country and defend our political values.'"

In other words, McCain was for discrimination before he was against it.

Former Bush White House aide David Kuo, now a BeliefNet contributor, said McCain was "pandering to what he thinks the Christian conservative community wants to hear" and predicted he "will have a lot of explaining to do about this interview."