Former Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry finds his faith, marries it with politics
WASHINGTON – Mike McCurry was President Bill Clinton’s spokesman during the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky years, so suffice to say he knows what it’s like to feel uncomfortable at a podium. But his typical audience these days scares him in a new way.
A few weeks ago, McCurry, 59, became a teacher in religion and politics at Wesley Theological Seminary, from which he graduated last spring. It marked his official transition from a hard-charging, super-political spin doctor who quietly attended church to a very public evangelizer for the idea that religious values can save “the frozen tundra” of today’s politics.
“I had no problem getting up and doing briefings before millions of people, but I am fearful in front of 12 students that I can’t really fake it,” says McCurry, who spent more than two decades as a political spokesman before going on to do communications for corporations and nonprofits. “I’m laying it on the line about who I am and what I believe in a way that’s different. When you’re spokesman for someone else, they don’t care what you think. These people want to know who I am.”
Who McCurry is is, in part, a hybrid: He derides the political scene but is still very much in it, as an advisor to left-leaning religious advocacy groups and candidates. He almost spits the word “spin doctor” but has remained in communications and image-making his entire life. He’s known both as the guy who prompted great skepticism by declaring himself “out of the loop” on the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship and as an elder statesman of respectful, frank dialogue. The whole point of his program at Wesley is to get seminarians – most of whom are on the progressive side – to be comfortable merging their faith and politics in the public square. Yet several of his closest friends say he never speaks to them about his own beliefs.
When he left the Clinton administration in fall of 1998, McCurry wrote on White House stationery to a friend that he wanted to do “something that counts.” Yet his is not a story of radical conversion, some Chuck Colson kind of thing on the left. It’s a more subtle tale of a guy who has always had both a faith life and a political life, but realized later that the two should be one.
Growing up in Northern California in the churning late 1960s, McCurry’s family was involved in the local Congregational church, which is part of the liberal United Church of Christ. While his parents focused on church music, McCurry eagerly participated in youth group trips to protest against the war in Berkeley. He loved politics.
“The church is what brought me to politics. But I thought: If the church is doing politics, I can go do politics on my own, which is what I did,” he said.
As high school newspaper editor, he had advocated for more racially integrated schools. When he was a senior, he chose to switch to the all-black high school “to attempt to prove the courage of my convictions.”
His father and grandfather worked for the government and he saw public service and politics as a noble calling, an expression of his values. At that point – and for a few decades – he didn’t give a lot of thought to what Christianity taught and what he believed. He also didn’t attend church once he left his parents’ home.
After graduating from Princeton University he went right to Washington to work as a press secretary for Democratic senators and a string of Democratic candidates for the White House (all lost, including Bruce Babbitt, Bob Kerrey and John Glenn).
McCurry was considered a gifted communicator, and even though he hadn’t been part of Clinton’s initial campaign crew (Kerrey was a competitor), in 1994 he was brought from the State Department to the White House.
At that point religion was largely associated in politics with the right wing, and as secular Americans became a larger part of the Democratic Party base, Democrats became increasingly uncomfortable framing their values in spiritual terms. By then, McCurry and his wife, Debra, were parents and had become regulars at St. Paul’s United Methodist church in Kensington, Md., where he taught Sunday school and made the separation between religion and politics more formal.
“I went to church on Sundays but it never dawned on me – it never occurred to me that that should affect how I should behave,” McCurry said. “Church for me was a sanctuary away from the world of politics, where I could get away from it all and have my own spiritual reflections. I wasn’t contemplating what Scripture said about right and wrong. It was more like: How can I get through this day?” He never spoke about his faith at the White House.
Speaking openly about faith was not the Democrats’ way, but it wasn’t McCurry’s way either. He was – and is – somewhat private about his faith.
“He’s more likely to talk about John Boehner than John Wesley. I think that’s a side of himself he’s happy to share but reluctant to impose,” said Joe Simitian, a childhood friend with whom McCurry remains close and who went on to become mayor of Palo Alto, Calif. Other friends chuckled at the image of McCurry as choirboy, talking about prayer or sitting around reading the Bible quietly.