August 21, 2000
Clinton challenges pastors to help encourage politicians
___By Bob Allen
___Associated Baptist Press
___CHICAGO (ABP)--More pastors should try to help politicians, President Bill Clinton said Aug. 10 in a far-ranging open forum with one of his own spiritual advisers, mega-church pastor Bill Hybels.
___Speaking an hour and 15 minutes at a ministers' leadership conference at Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago, Clinton talked openly about his faith, including lessons learned from the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
___Asked by Hybels to describe the current condition of his spiritual life, Clinton said: "Well, I feel much more at peace than I used to. And I think that as awful as what I went through was --humiliating as it was, more to others than to me, even--sometimes when you think you've got something behind you and then it's not behind you, this sort of purging process, if it doesn't destroy you, can bring you to a different place."
___Clinton said he is "in the second year of a process of trying to totally rebuild my life from a terrible mistake I made."
___Clinton said he also "learned a lot about forgiveness" in his personal ordeal.
___"I've always thought I was sort of a forgiving, generous person, you know, non-judgmental in a negative sense--not that I don't have opinions. But I realized once you've actually had to stand up and ask for forgiveness before the whole-wide world, it makes it a little harder to be as hard as I think I once was on other people."
___Clinton's comments came just days before the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. They also coincided with an ongoing discussion about the role of faith in politics sparked by Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore's selection of Sen. Joe Lieberman as the first Jewish running mate in history.
___Both Gore and Clinton are Southern Baptists. Republican candidate George W. Bush also is an evangelical Christian and a Methodist.
___Clinton told the pastors' gathering that he became a Christian in 1955, when he was 9 years old and attended Park Place Baptist Church in Hot Springs, Ark.
___Another milestone came when Clinton was 12, when in the midst of a school-desegregation crisis, Billy Graham refused a request that he speak to a segregated audience in a crusade he was planning in Little Rock.
___"He said if they insisted on that, he would not come," Clinton recalled, "that we were all children of God and he wanted to lead everybody to Christ."
___The stand "really touched me," Clinton said, because his grandparents were among the few white people he knew who supported integration. "And all of a sudden, to have Billy Graham validating this based on his Christian witness had a profound impact on me. And it got me thinking at that early age about the relationship between your faith and your work, which, of course, has been one of the most hotly debated issues in Christianity for 2,000 years."
___Asked how he would respond to those who believe his frequent church attendance is "just an act," Clinton replied, "Well, at least it's a consistent act."
___Clinton said more pastors should seek opportunities to minister to politicians, even if they don't share their policies or party affiliation.
___"First of all, because we need it," Clinton said. Leaders are forced to make decisions that affect other people's lives, often under circumstances that are "unimaginably difficult, either because you're under political or personal duress."
___Also, he added, "if you're not careful, when you have this kind of job, it can overtake you. You can believe it's even more important than it is. You can let it take up even more time than it should. And it can crowd out all that other stuff inside that keeps you centered and growing and whole."
___"It's very important that everybody in public life has somebody talking to them who ... has no interest in either playing up to them and telling them what they want to hear, no interest in getting something from them and no interest in attacking them. And a pastor can do that."
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