The Religious Community Speaks Out on Clinton
Episcopal News Service. September 28, 1998 [98-2229_Z]
Kathryn McCormick
(ENS) As Congress, and later the public, reviewed the prosecutor's report on his affair with a White House intern, President Clinton offered apologies and asked for forgiveness.
His most dramatic moment of contrition came during a short speech on September 11 before more than 100 religious leaders gathered at a White House prayer breakfast that had been scheduled long before the House of Representatives took its first official look at the report whose findings could lead to the president's impeachment.
"I don't think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned," Clinton told the religious leaders-Protestant, Roman Catholic, Muslim and Jewish. He asked for forgiveness and declared that he had repented, adding that he acknowledged that he now must also be willing to give the forgiveness he seeks and to renounce "the pride and the anger which cloud judgment, lead people to excuse and compare and to blame and complain."
The reaction to the president's remarks was mixed: some clergy sympathized with his plea while others, especially conservative clergy, remained skeptical.
"To admit 'sin' now, after having been caught by a relentless prosecutor, cornered by a grand jury, and run out of delaying and obfuscating tactics clearly has not persuaded everyone of the sincerity of the president's repentance," said Jim Wallis, a leading evangelical who founded the Sojourners community in Washington, D.C. "My religious mother (who voted for Clinton) put it this way: 'He didn't really repent, he just got caught.'"
But however the president finally works out his actual repentance, Wallis added, the rest of us might think about some repentance of our own. Maybe we share some of the president's self-absorption, a feeling that because we have won people's approval or have gained power and success we can avoid the consequences of our actions, no matter how reckless or selfish, he said.
"There are lessons here for each of our lives, families, and careers," he said. "How could Clinton's genuine repentance -- and ours -- begin to teach our nation something about real spiritual values?"
Earlier, Bishop Richard F. Grein of the Diocese of New York, Jewish Theological Seminary Chancellor Ismar Schorch and Herbert W. Chilstrom, former presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, all said they felt Clinton should resign from office.
"I think his moral presence in the country has been undercut so badly that he can't lead," Grein said in an interview with a reporter from The New York Times seeking the opinion of clergy on the president in the wake of the scandal. Grein told the reporter he felt bad for the president, the nation, "and for everyone else."
In a separate interview with the same reporter, Bishop Mark Sisk, who will succeed Grein as bishop of New York, said he thought that now was not the time for a presidential resignation. "The world is in a very dangerous moment with a global economic crisis and the current Russian political emergency," he said in a statement released by the diocesan office, adding, "It would be precipitous to have a sudden change in leadership at this time."
According to the statement, both bishops underscored their "deep concern for the welfare of this country, its leadership and particularly for those poor and forgotten persons who are easily overlooked by the distractions of the current national scandal.
"I respect, and hope that we will honor, the plea of President Clinton for forgiveness," Frank T. Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, said in correspondence with church members who raised the issue with him. "This is rooted in my understanding and experience of God's boundless compassion and mercy. I am deeply mindful that all of us, in various ways, are constantly in need of the grace of forgiveness ourselves."
He added, "At the same time, I realize there are very real questions about the implications of the President's actions for the symbolic nature of the Office of President, and the role of the President both as leader of our nation and within the world community. These questions must be addressed carefully and sensitively, and in a nonpartisan manner, with the focus clearly on what is best for our nation."