Clinton will keep spiritual advisers

Christian Century, Jan 24, 2001

Bill Clinton will continue meeting with three spiritual advisers in his post--White House years. One of them--J. Philip Wogaman--will still be his pastor as wife Hillary Rodham Clinton takes up duties in the U.S. Senate.

After President Clinton's confession at a White House breakfast in September 1998 that he had "sinned" in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he has regularly met with at least one of three clerics--United Methodist Wogaman, evangelical Tony Campolo and writer Gordon MacDonald.

But it was his eight-year association with Wogaman's congregation, Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C., that drew public attention on January 7. At the 11 A. M. service, President Clinton gave the sermon after daughter Chelsea read from the Old Testament and Senator Clinton, a life-long Methodist, gave the New Testament reading.

"You cannot imagine the peace, the comfort, the strength I have drawn from my Sundays here," the president said in his reflections from the pulpit. He pledged to work to "lift the fortunes and hopes" of the disadvantaged and to be a peacemaker after leaving the White House. "I will try every day to remember ... that Christ admonished us that our lives will be judged by how we do unto the least of our neighbors."

Clinton praised Foundry's work on issues relating to the homeless and world peace, and for its inclusion of gays and lesbians and people of all races and nationalities. He concluded by thanking the church "for your constant reminders large and small that, though we have all fallen short of glory, we are all redeemed by faith and the love of God."

He also cited Wogaman, the church's senior minister, for his support. "Most of you know that for more than two years now, he and two other minister friends of mine have shared the burden of meeting with me on a weekly basis," Clinton said. "It has been an immense blessing to me and to my service as president."

Wogaman said that though post-presidential meetings with Clinton won't follow exactly the same pattern they did when he inhabited the White House, "it's going to be significant."

Campolo, of St. David's, Pennsylvania, said he was encouraged that the meetings with the president will be ongoing. "It's a further indication of his desire to understand his life and behavior in spiritual terms," said Campolo, president of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education. --RNS