McGovern was Methodist advocate of Social Gospel

To most American voters in 1972, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota was way too liberal on many issues—and he was beaten badly by incumbent Richard Nixon. But to many fellow Methodists he was also a churchgoing humanitarian who in the 1960s directed the new Food for Peace Program and a forward-looking politician informed by the Social Gospel.

McGovern, 90, died October 21 at a hospice in Sioux Falls. McGovern’s death was “a sad moment for our nation,” said John McCullough, executive director of Church World Service, citing the senator’s years of public service to healing and reconciliation.

“He was a pioneering force behind the school lunch program here in the United States,” McCullough wrote in a tribute for Religion News Service. When he spoke to Church World Service officials in 2002, “McGovern said that a proposed $48 billion increase in military spending was a mistake . . . that ‘security’ was bound up in how we feed and clothe the poor and hungry, not merely how well we were armed militarily.”