Fred Thompson has been beat up for giving the impression that he’s an infrequent churchgoer and none-too-devout (including by Focus on the Family founder James Dobson), but now his old pastor is coming to his defense. Andy Brown, Thompson’s childhood pastor at the First Street Church of Christ in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee tells the Los Angeles Times that Thompson underwent a full immersion baptism at age 12—he even dug up the church bulletin from December 15, 1954 to prove it—and that the Thompson family regularly attended services twice a week. While touched by the pastor’s defense, God-o-Meter was ultimately unimpressed, feeling that it would likely remind religious conservatives that, so far, Thompson’s last documented church attendance apparently occurred more than 50 years ago.

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