McCain was raised in the Episcopal Church, a mainline Protestant denomination that claims 2.4 million members in the United States.His great-grandfather was an Episcopal minister, and McCain graduated from Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., in 1954.
In his book Character is Destiny, McCain describes how his faith sustained him during the five and a half years he spent as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, saying he "needed to believe in God to maintain through all of the horrors of war a sense of moral responsibility to struggle to remain a human being."
In his book Faith of My Fathers, he describes feeling God's love as he discovered the words "I believe in God" scratched into a cell wall.
He also describes holding church services with fellow prisoners of war and says he "prayed more often and more fervently than I ever had as a free man."
While raised Episcopalian, McCain currently attends services at the North Phoenix Baptist Church.
The church is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, the country's largest evangelical denomination.
In September 2007 McCain stated, "I'm not Episcopalian. I'm Baptist."
A week later, he emphasized that "the most important thing is that I am a Christian."
McCain sought the endorsement of two prominent evangelical ministers who subsequently attracted controversy when inflammatory statements from their sermons were publicized.
As a result, McCain eventually rejected the endorsements and condemned the remarks of John C. Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio and Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio.
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