The New York Times on Saturday published a major feature on Hilary Rodham Clinton and her faith:
Long before her beliefs would be tested in the most wrenching of ways as first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton taught an adult Sunday school class on the importance of forgiveness. It is a lesson, she says, that she has harked back to often.
“We all have things that oftentimes we’re upset about, or ashamed of, or feel guilty over, and so many people carry these enormous burdens around,” Mrs. Clinton said in a recent interview. “One of the great gifts of faith is to let it go.”
The themes of wrongs, forgiveness and reconciliation have played out repeatedly in Mrs. Clinton’s life, as she has endured the ordeal of her husband’s infidelity, engaged in countless political battles and shared a deep, mutual distrust with adversaries.
Her Methodist faith, Mrs. Clinton says, has guided her as she sought to repair her marriage, forgiven some critics who once vilified her and struggled in the bare-knuckles world of politics to fulfill the biblical commandment to love thy neighbor.
Mrs. Clinton, the New York senator who is seeking the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, has been alluding to her spiritual life with increasing regularity in recent years, language that has dovetailed with efforts by her party to reach out to churchgoers who have been voting overwhelmingly Republican.
Mrs. Clinton’s references to faith, though, have come under attack, both from conservatives who doubt her sincerity (one writer recently lumped her with the type of Christians who “believe in everything but God”) and liberals who object to any injection of religion into politics. And her motivations have been cast as political calculation by detractors, who suggest she is only trying to moderate her liberal image.
“Many people have developed opinions about her,” said John C. Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. “Senator Clinton has a long history of involvement in religious matters and appears to be a person of deep and sincere faith, but a lot of people don’t perceive her that way.”
Mrs. Clinton and others who have known her as a church youth-group member, a Sunday school teacher or a participant in weekly Senate prayer breakfasts say faith has helped define her, shaping everything from her commitment to public service to the most intimate of decisions.
“It has certainly been a huge part of who I am, and how I have seen the world and what I believe in, and what I have tried to do in my life,” Mrs. Clinton said in the half-hour interview devoted to her religious convictions, which her campaign granted only after months of requests.
Ever the good student, Mrs. Clinton can speak knowledgeably about St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and John Wesley, the father of Methodism.
On the campaign trail or in other public appearances, she increasingly is speaking more personally about faith, sprinkling in references to inspiring biblical verses ( “faith without works is dead,” from James), Jesus’ injunction to care for the needy and even her daily prayer life, which she credits to being raised in a “praying family.”
As someone generally conservative, I was touched by some of the content in the article. Also, it was very fairly written and it took in a fair array of opinions.
What Senator Clinton says at the end is certainly a better summary of Christianity than what we get from most TEC leadership statements.
Will be interesting to see if the Dems can galvanize a balanced Christian message that is closer to RC social teaching than LibProt atheism.
And we all have to be on guard when these faith issues start flying – there is a really nasty email hit piece flying around trying to taint Barak Obama as a secret, radicalized Muslim. Real trash, and it is exposed as such at Snopes.com
I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton is a person of faith — as are all the other citizens of this country.
It will be interesting — very very interesting — to see if the voting citizens of this country will be able to see the difference between the religion of progressives and the religion of traditionalists.
In fact, Hillary Clinton’s faith will be quite similar to that of the radical progressives in ECUSA and quite dissimilar to traditionalists in ECUSA, and I await with interest as to whether Americans will 1) see the differences between the two gospels that those two sides are promoting, and 2) care.
I don’t have a prediction about those two questions. I suspect in general that the polarization between the two gospels that are duking it out in ECUSA will be revealed to be that of the US as well, in matters of faith.
Having taken a religion major in a Methodist college and worked in Methodist parishes a couple of summers, I easily recognize Mrs. Clinton’s religion. It’s definitely Methodism as I encountered it: social engaged and personally pious. I won’t vote for her, though, since I disagree with her on key political issues.
With any luck, Clinton, Obama, Romney, Brownback, Thompson, et.al. will be elected on the basis of their politics, not their religion. I certainly want a person of honesty and integrity in the White House. Christians often lack in those characteristics, of course, and non-Christians may well excel.
As an aside, however, I wonder at the political position promoting the Christian ethic of helping the poor, but which balks at protecting unborn babies, since that would violate the First Amendment. My snarking side just wonders at such selective morality. 🙂
I enjoyed this piece. It certainly softened my opinion of Ms. Clinton. Not that I practice her brand of faith — or that I agree with her politics — I don’t. I will not vote for her; however, I formally was of the opinion that her “profession” as a person of faith was bogus — I should not judge her or anyone else. I prayed for her this morning for the first time in my life! The prayer was not at all political — it was personal and it was good for me.
How anyone can examine the profesional and personal lives of the Clintons and rationally conclude that either of them leads a Christian life is just beyond me….
“How anyone can examine the profesional and personal lives of the Clintons and rationally conclude that either of them leads a Christian life is just beyond me…. ”
This could be said of a lot of Christians, at times…..including myself…..We all struggle to lead a Christian life, and fail on a daily basis. So I don’t intend to “rationally conclude” about the Clintons…..
Many left-wingers, like Sen. Clinton, sincerely ground their political opinions in Christianity as they interpret it. I disagree with many of their political views and find their scriptural interpretations faulty — but disagreement is freely allowed in the USA, and thank God for that.
What perplexes me about these articles about Sen. Clinton’s faith and Sen. Obama’s faith is that when Pres. Bush expresses his similarly strong faith, we get howls from the mainstream media and commentators about “theocracy” and “fanatics.” It is not unusual to see a politician’s statement of conservative Christian faith treated more harshly than the beliefs of conservative Muslims in American public life.
RE: “What perplexes me about these articles about Sen. Clinton’s faith and Sen. Obama’s faith is that when Pres. Bush expresses his similarly strong faith, we get howls from the mainstream media and commentators about “theocracy†and “fanatics.—
Katherine, I think this is called “capitulation to reality”. Sadly for progressives, Americans care about Christianity still. So . . . in the political realm, it’s important for politicians to emphasize that they are “people of faith”.
Again, I think it will be interesting to see if Americans care about what sort of “faith” the candidates actually adhere to and which gospel purported Christians on both sides actually believe and promote.
‘What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? If a brother of sister is being aborted, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled’, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.’
Yes, Sarah, we’ve seen it time and again, but I am still amazed by the illogic and/or hypocrisy. The key issue is, of course, that while as Americans we believe all men (in the generic!) are created equal, as Christians we believe that only the traditional Christian faith contains the fullness of truth, as nearly as people are able to understand it. Clinton and Obama get rave reviews in the media for their faith because the journalists think their faith is good, and Bush and Romney get bad reviews because their faiths are both viewed as bad. Rep. Ellison, D-Minn., gets a pass because it’s politically correct to ignore problems with radical Islam. Since it is impossible that a conservative/traditionalist Anglican will be running for President in ’08, or even a conservative Catholic, probably, I will have to do what I always do — evaluate candidates based on their political records and public policy statements, not on their religious beliefs. If a conservative Muslim were to run, I’d have to add religion since there is no secular realm in Islam.
A person who talks openly about her faith & points to it as the reason her marriage is still in tact – that strikes as something that is difficult to pigeon hole as conservative or progressive.
While Hillary is not my candidate, the manner in which she & Obama have discussed their faith & practice influencing their policy is very different from the Bush Regime’s use of God talk to justify wars of retribution & tax cuts for the rich. In both of his election, Bush & Rove positioned evangelicals as the primary engine of victory. One only need track the recent debacles in the DoJ & the Surgeon General appointment to understand how deeply the Bush Regime is tied to Kaiser Dobson and the rising brand of Christian Reconstructionism.
I look forward to hearing more about how faith influences Rudy, McCain, Mitt & Fred – they all seem very uncomfortable when they discuss Jesus as a force in their lives. The “values” voters that used to hold the Bush Regime in such high esteem certainly have some soul searching to do in ’08.
Of course your description, bob, of Bush’s use of God talk is grossly distorted by any objective standards. But can you really not see that Obama and Clinton are attempting to use progressives as the engine of victory? It remains to be seen whether that will work, or whether there are enough progressives to give them the victory.
I am so thankful for President Bush’s tax cuts! Now I get a refund for my 35,000 a year instead of sending the IRS a check like I did when I was making 28,000 a year.
I totally agree with Katherine. Anytime a Republican/conservative candidate/office holder speaks of faith or religion, or accepts an invitation to address a religious meeting or a church congregation, the press and the [i]’other side'[/i] rakes them over the coals for violation of [i][b]”Separation of Church and State”[/b][/i].
Yet when liberal/Democratic candidates/office holders do the same thing, it’s [i][b]”reaching out to the people”[/b][/i].
What a double standard! 😛
I am not a fan of Al Gore’s or Jimmy Carter’s, but I can believe that they lead Christian lives. In other words, my objection to the Clintons is not partisan.
From outside our borders in the rest of the world, people don’t speak of U.S. liberty and justice but rather of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. American inequality is now greater than any time since the Gilded Age. The war in Iraq has taken our focus off the much larger issue of defeating radical Islam.
This issue is not “Separation of Church and State” – it is the outcomes of policies and policy-makers whose primary qualification for gov’t positions is their religious affiliation or personal loyalty to a pampered Baby Boomer who came from a rich family and went to prep school and an elite university.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who held a Bible in one hand and a Constitution in the other as he called the American people to the values of both, was a member of the ‘other side’ you note. So is Jack Danforth, Ann Richards, Bob Casey and David Kuo.
I have been living outside our borders for the past year and a half, in India, and beginning in the fall I will be in the heart of Islam in Egypt. I can tell you that in India, they spend very little time talkiing about Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. They are far more interested in the infiltration of Islamist terrorists from Pakistan and Bangladesh, in the home-grown Islamist terrorist bombings, and in the Maoist, ULFA (Assamese) and Tamil strife raging inside and near their borders. You and many others here have an American-centric view which the world does not necessarily share.
And I can’t resist this one: “personal loyalty to a pampered Baby Boomer who came from a rich family and went to prep school and an elite university.” You mean, like Al Gore or John Kerry? People who live in glass houses should be careful what stones they pick up. Sens. Obama and Clinton come from a very comfortable backgrounds, hardly disavantaged, and went to elite Eastern schools.
Katherine, the world does not share your view – any recent poll or survey supports this. Over the last five years, favorable ratings of the United States have decreased in 26 of the 33 countries for which trends are available. You may not wish it were so, but it is the truth.
Touche on Gore & Kerry – I suspect values voters would cringe to realize their beloved Bush is not much different from the people he dismissed as elite. Obama’s story is very, very different from these pampered Baby Boomers.
You didn’t say popular opinion, bob. You said specifically Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. To a great extent public opinion in Europe is based on the grossly biased reporting coming out of US and UK-based news services. For a recent example involving the AP, consider its “reporting” of an alleged mass beheading which turned out to be bogus vs. its refusal to refer to extensively well-documented reporting, with photos, of a real al-Qaeda massacre in Iraq. Liberal journalists aren’t reporting the news, they’re making it in an image to suit their prejudices.
That said, Indian and Egyptian people I have met are not generally anti-American; quite the contrary. Obviously, I haven’t had any conversations with Egyptian radicals. Lots of those are in jail. Europeans ARE often anti-American, and they don’t want to look at the terror cells growing in their own back yards, either. Several Germans have been aggressively rude to me, and I don’t advertise my politics in foreign climes. They were just rude out of an arrogant belief in their own superiority. I am saving URLs on German political and corporate involvement in the oil-for-food scam to send them if they persist.
Obama has an interesting history, including early years outside the US in Indonesia. However, his subsequent upbringing in Hawaii and his education in the Ivy League are not unlike Bush’s or Sen. Clinton’s. The senior Bushes were not enormously wealthy when Bush was young. Comfortable, yes, but not in the same economic class as Kennedy or Rockefeller.
Bob (#15 & 17)
If the rest of the world hates us, then why are they trying to come to America? If we are so evil, then why do we have such an illegal alien problem?
Some of the things America does are reviled, but we are the most generous nation on earth and we are the only nation that can protect the seas for safe shipping. Do we abuse our military power? Somtimes. But the US Military has been much more a force for peace and freedom than it has for war and tyranny.
I suspect that to find out what the “world” thinks of us, you look at what people do (come to America) rather than what they tell a press interested in a particular slant on a story.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Ah Philip you got that right. Foreign nationals are still “beating down the US doors to get in. On the other hand I wonder how many of the prisoners in Cuba would be welcomed by the countries they came from. Nuff said!
Ah, it’s all the dreaded media, huh ?
Phil, using your logic on immigration, I guess China & India are the most respected countries in the world, given their size & enormous influx of new citizens ?
In terms of generosity, the truth is a bit less than you suggest, Phil. But both on a per capita basis and as a percentage of the nation’s wealth, America’s emergency relief and development aid to poor countries actually ranks at the bottom of the list of developed nations.
Katherine, you are stretching credibility to suggest that Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan sheep herder, grew up in conditions like the Bush family. Prescott Bush was a powerful Senator – the family is a dynasty. He went to Oxy & Columbia on full scholarship, then worked as a community organizer in the bowels of Chicago. Again, truth can annoying, can’t it ?
#21
“I guess China & India are the most respected countries in the world, given their size & enormous influx of new citizens ?”
I’d like to see a citation validating your assertion that the PRC or India have a net immigration influx. Based on the PRC’s strict border security, I have my doubts if your implication is true here.
“But both on a per capita basis and as a percentage of the nation’s wealth, America’s emergency relief and development aid to poor countries actually ranks at the bottom of the list of developed nations. ”
Again, a citation would be good, along with some definitions. Are you including indirect contributions such as support for the World Bank? I note that you are excluding foreign aid in the form of military aid/loans, but how are you accounting for such foreign deals as the Clinton administration’s rescue of the Mexican foreign debt or US military logistical support of Indian Ocean tsunami relief efforts, which on paper might resemble a zero sum transaction within the Federal Budget? For that matter, did you include Iraqi and Afghan reconstruction budgets?
“Katherine, you are stretching credibility to suggest that Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan sheep herder, grew up in conditions like the Bush family. ”
Katherine significantly qualified her statement so that your criticism is largely invalid. In fact, you both are correct to some degree.
Finally, your unctuous last sentence shows a remarkable degree of intellectual arrogance which is not at all supported by your glib assertions. If you were so omniscient, your facts and reason would speak for themselves. But instead you rely on poorly prepared insinuations which at best depict a one sided view of what you think this thread is discussing.
#21 addendum
http://www.gcim.org/en/finalreport.html Annex II
cites that India and China as being the two largest sources of immigrants to other nations, offset somewhat by India regionally receiving some migration from other countries
Tom, a one sided view among commenters on T1:9 ? I can not imagine !
I would take your last post with the utmost literalism.
Utmost literalism among commenters on T1:9 ? Again, I can not imagine !
Elves- I would suggest deletion of #21-27 as an unproductive diversion from the Hillary Clinton thread. I apologise for feeding this subthread which serves no useful discourse.
I have to concur with #27. Bob’s snide, infantile comments and the rebuttuls thereof are worse than useless.
I don’t buy it. A Christian would not lie.
When she looked into the camera and said that the rumors about her husband were ” a vast right wing conspiracy”…she knew that was not true.
I am tired of the politically correctness of giving her the benefit of the doubt. No true Christian would purposefully lie to the whole country. No, they would not.
Not to mention her ties to the communist party club she chaired in college. Ok…I won’t open the box.
bl
So Bob Lee, using your logic – George Bush is not a true Christian, given the way he has purposefully lied to the whole country, taking us into a war in Iraq that has cost thousands of lives & billions of dollars.