God and Hillary Clinton (8 page)
Read God and Hillary Clinton Online
Authors: Paul Kengor
Still, despite Vaught's emphasis on his personal scholarship, his conclusion and his advice to Bill were surprising given the other spiritual red flags that abortion was raising around the world. At the time of Vaught's counsel, the Catholic Church was already strongly committed to the pro-life position. It had come to that position not through invocation of a single Bible passage that featured the word “abortion,” but through a careful meeting of the minds between the Church's highest and most careful scholars. Indeed, had Vaught looked beyond the immediate confines of his personal study to what other scholars of the original Greek and Hebrew were concluding, he might have come to a far different conclusion and swayed Clinton to a pro-life position.
Ultimately the Protestants who followed Vaught would conclude that the unborn human was in fact a life, and terminating that life constituted murder or killing, in this case of a helpless innocent, which the Bible forbids. As the 1980s progressed, many Protestants began identifying Bible passages and stories about God knowing
and weaving humans in the womb, about the humanity of life in the wombâabout Jacob engaging in conflict in the womb, about Tamar's twins in the womb, and, most notably, about John the Baptist leaping for joy in the womb when encountering the presence of the Christ child in Mary's womb. Perhaps most striking, a passage in the Old Testament's Book of Ecclesiastes (11:5) speaks of the “breath of life” fashioning the human frame in the womb, a verse that should have been instrumental to Vaught's conclusions.
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The revelations, however, came too late for Clinton. There was just enough of a delay for him to end up firmly in the camp of his wife on the abortion issue, and so from this base belief that his minister reportedly helped to carve, Clinton would go on to become the most pro-choice president in history.
The Pilgrimage to Israel
During this time Vaught began having an effect not only on Bill but on Hillary as well, and in December 1981, while the Clintons campaigned to win back the governorship, Vaught approached them with an interesting proposition. Since 1938, ten years before the state of Israel came into being, Vaught had been venturing to the Holy Land, and now as Bill and Hillary found themselves struggling spiritually and politically to put Bill back in the governor's mansion, the couple decided to accompany Vaught on the trip.
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According to Bill, Hugh and Dorothy Rodham were big supporters of this “pilgrimage with Hillary,” and the grandparents even ventured to Little Rock to stay with baby Chelsea during the trip. On some level, Hugh must have relished the prospect of helping Hillary to reconnect with her spiritual roots after so much time of separation. Indeed, Hillary biographer Norman King claims that the trip was made “largely because of Hillary's insistence.” King said that the Clintons viewed the trip as both a religious pilgrimage and a chance
for the governor to retool and refreshâa change of scene and boost of morale.
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While on their journey, the Clintons spent most of their time in Jerusalem, retracing the steps that Christ himself walked and meeting with local Christians. Bill noted that they went to the Sea of Galilee, “where Jesus walked on water.” They saw the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and toured the city of Jericho. They saw the spot where Christ was crucified, and visited the small cave where Christians profess that Christ was buried and arose on the day now recognized as Easter Sunday.
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The entourage also went to two sites sacred to other faiths: the Western Wall, holy to Jews, and the Dome of the Rock, where Muslims believe Mohammed ascended to heaven to meet Allah.
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Through their travels, the Clintons also contemplated Armageddon and the mighty clash of civilizations to which the land had borne witness. Bill and Hillary went atop the city of Masada. “[A]s we looked down on the valley below,” said Bill, “Dr. Vaught reminded us that history's greatest armies, including those of Alexander the Great and Napoleon, had marched through it, and that the book of Revelation says that at the end of time, the valley will flow with blood.”
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In contrast to the anti-Israel version of Hillary portrayed during parts of the 1970s, some sources claim that this trip gave Hillary an inspired appreciation for the state of Israel, and, if so, it may have mitigated her alleged pro-PLO sympathies, giving more balance in her perspective. On this, Norman King cites Sarah Ehrman, a friend of the Clintons from the anti-Nixon, McGovern days: “Bill and Hillary understood the profound effect that Israel has on American Jews and around the world and share a feeling for the security and stability of the State of Israel.”
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Bill himself said that Reverend Vaught was instrumental in his own attitude toward Israel. “I have believed in supporting Israel as long as I have known anything about the issue,” Clinton said later. “It may have something to do with my religious upbringing. For the
last several years until he died, I was very much under the influence of my pastor.” He also says of Reverend Vaught: “He was a close friend of Israel and began visiting even before the State of Israel was created. And when he was on his deathbed, he said to me that he hoped someday I would have a chance to run for president, but that if I ever let Israel down, God would never forgive me. I will never let Israel down.”
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One biographer notes that by this point in their relationship Clinton had come to see Vaught as something of a father figure.
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Indeed, even if Clinton had initially picked Vaught's church for political purposes, he had ultimately come to view it as a fruitful choiceâone that the governor himself might have later deemed providential.
Sunday School Teacher
As for Hillary, there was less second-guessing about her choice of church than about her faith in general. Joyce Milton notes that the religious practices of both Clintons were a subject for “image adjustment” in Arkansas, where voters were complaining that Hillary “had no religion” and that she likewise had not been regularly visible in churchâsome saw her as a godless liberal.
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Yet there were a number of signs that supported the legitimacy of Hillary's return to organized religion. Her openness about her Methodism was practiced with such frequency and gusto, while being completely consistent with her early church training, that it proved difficult to dismiss it as insincere and purely political. Throughout the 1980s, Arkansas's first lady traveled around the state giving a speech that explained why she was a Methodistâwhich, of course, did not hurt politically. In that stump speech, she spoke candidly about her faith, and specifically about her close theological ties to John Wesley, which had lain dormant for close to ten years:
As a member of the British Parliament, [Wesley] spoke out for the poor at a time when their lives were being transformed by far-reaching industrial and economic changes. He spent the rest of his life evangelizing among the same people he had spoken up for in Parliament. He preached a gospel of social justice, demanding as determinedly as ever that society do right by all its people. But he also preached a gospel of personal responsibility, asking every man and woman to take responsibility for their own livesâ¦and cultivate the habits that would make them productive.
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These speeches were not just historical. Hillary also spoke of her personal relationship with the Almighty and explained how much of her beliefs was rooted in what she had learned at Park Ridgeâexperiences from her youth group days, which she shared with these Southerners. She also typically reiterated her favorite Wesley proverb: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.”
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Ed Matthews, pastor at the First United Methodist Church in Little Rock, recalled these speeches in an interview:
She was frequently out speaking in churchesâ¦particularly in Methodist churches. She has a lesson, a presentation, on “Why I am a United Methodist.” It's not exclusive, not trying to exclude any other religions. She has a profound understanding of the Wesleyan tradition of grace. A profound understanding that we are all made by God in our own way with our own gifts to make our contribution and that the world is a better place because we've been here. That is not arrogantâit's a grace filled position. And she is a lawyer who herself has been quite well gifted.
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This resurgent evangelistic spirit was reminiscent of the Park Ridge Hillary, and of an adult who looked to be coming back to the faith. Reverend Matthews happened upon a telling insight into Hillary's faith at this juncture: “One of her favorite thoughts,” he said later, “was that the goal of life is to restore what has been lost, to find oneness with God, and until we find this we are lonely.”
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This may have explained Hillary's separation in the 1970s, and her return to the flock in the 1980s. She was now in the South in the 1980s, a fish out of water, lost and lonely, and through her faith, she could restore what she had lost in the Northeast at Yale and Wellesley, again finding oneness with God.
While Hillary may not have been using her faith for political positioning, no doubt her political ideology was borrowing heavily from her faith during this spiritual resurgence. What Don Jones had given Hillary was a brand of Methodism fully applicable to her ideology; he had helped Hillary politicize her faith, which was now a fundamental source for her left-leaning ideas.
A barometer of Hillary's genuine return to the faith was the talks she gave outside of camera shot or reporters' notepads. According to Ed Matthews and others in the congregation, Hillary was a “regular” teacher in one of the Sunday school classes, alternating with other teachers. She was part of a so-called forum classâ“forum” meaning that the weekly class had revolving leaders. She was part of the rotation. Hers was called the “Bowen class,” after a man named Bill Bowen who was the acting administrative governor when Bill was running for president, and a prominent banker and lawyer in Little Rock. She was also an occasional guest teacher in other adult and youth classes, according to Pastor Matthews.
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One of the attendees, Willard Lewis, recalled Hillary teaching the Bowen class “several” times while also attending “several” times when the class was led by others, but not on a consistent basis.
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According to Lewis, everyone in the group recognized that Hillary's regular attendance was prohibited by the fact that “she was a very busy
lady,” being both first lady of Arkansas and a lawyer with the Rose Law Firm, and that her attendance was “limited by events probably beyond her control, not by her choice.” Lewis said that class members “always looked forward” to those occasions when Hillary could teach “She never failed to impress us with her verbal skills, her seemingly inexhaustible supply of information on just about any subject, and her intelligence, which I personally regarded as superior to that of her very intelligent husband.”
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Lewis, a journalist who spent thirty-three years with the now defunct
Arkansas Gazette
, was on a first-name basis with Hillary. Though today he regrets that his “seventy-six-year-old brain” can no longer recall specific subjects she chose to address, his general recollection is that they were mostly of a religious nature and not having to do with politics or nonreligious themes, though she could veer into related subjects of interest. Says Lewis: “It seemed to us that even on short notice, Hillary was quite capable of literate, intelligent, and seemingly well organized treatises on just about any subject.”
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He also regrets that he cannot recall details, like whether Hillary opened or closed the class with a prayer.
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Once, in a display that might set off alarm bells among today's more secular-minded Democrats, Hillary went so far as to invite the adult Sunday school class for a picnic on the back lawn of the governor's mansion.
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Lewis's short memory is unfortunate, since it seems that a Sunday school class led by Hillary would be more expected to focus on Methodist history, the teachings of Wesley, and social justice activism than some type of exegesis of Scripture. One would expect Hillary to select the topic for her Sunday turn at the lectern rather than picking up with a spot in the rotation where the last leader left off, with, say, John 6:53.
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In other words, if Hillary had freelanced more than usual, jumping into the rotation with her own interpretation of a meaningful section of, say, 1 Corinthians or Romans or Hebrews or Galatiansârather than giving a vague explanation of why she was a Methodist or why Jesus loves the poorâit might tell us much more
about the maturity of her faith and her spiritual path at that point.
When asked if there was any unfriendliness toward Hillary around the church because of her progressive views or her initial refusal to change her name, Lewis added: “I recall that there was some resentment in some more conservative quarters of the stateâ¦but I am not aware of any such sentiment in the church itself; quite the contrary, in fact. I think Hillary was widely admired by fellow church members and certainly faced no negativity in terms of [the] attendance or membership.” Lewis notes that this was not a surprise because the First United Methodist Church “is, on the whole, a very liberal congregation.”
But while Hillary herself was fairly well regarded, some churchgoers at First United were quietly beginning to have doubts about her husband, and as the 1980s progressed, rumors of Bill's philandering began to swirl around the church and the community of Little Rock. When asked, Lewis added that “except in the most general terms and then based solely on rumor and innuendo, Bill's peccadilloes were not widely known within the church itself.”
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