Vaught was one of the leading abortion opponents among Little Rock clergy, but he said he shared some of Clinton’s ambivalence, having personally witnessed “some extremely difficult” pregnancies. He was not convinced that the Bible forbade abortion in all circumstances.
The minister went to his Bible to reconsider, after which Vaught determined that in the origina Hebrew, “personhood” stemmed from words translated as “to breathe life into.” Thus, he averred, the Bible would define a person’s life as beginning at birth, with the first intake of breath. He reportedly told the governor that this did not mean that abortion was right, but he felt one could not say definitively, based on Scripture, that it was murder.
In all of his discussions about abortion thereafter, Clinton relied on his minister’s interpretation to bolster his pro-choice position.
Clinton asked his Baptist minister, Dr. W. O. Vaught, if it was biblically permissible for him to execute a man, and Vaught told him that the death penalty was not prohibited in the original translation of the Ten Commandments. The final decision would be Clinton’s, noted Vaught, but he “must never worry about whether [the death penalty] is forbidden by the Bible, because it isn’t.”
In the weeks that followed, more than 100,000 Marielitos washed upon America’s shores, and Carter did not know where to place them. He telephoned Governor Clinton, who said he would be willing to detain some of the escapees at Fort Chaffee, where they could be assimilated.
The detainees overflowed the grounds. The Arkansas KKK drove to Fort Chaffee to express its disapproval. As a result, a riot ensued between Cubans inside and KKK belligerents. Soon, law enforcement arrived, but for Clinton’s reelection, it was too late. The entire fiasco was captured by news organizations for all to see, and Arkansans, led by GOP candidate Frank White, asked why such a debacle had been permitted to happen.
A few months later, Bill Clinton was defeated.
By the mid-1950s, the only religious education that Bill Clinton had received came from two years in a Catholic grade school, a subject on which virtually nothing has been written. But starting in 1955, the 9-year-old began to wear a suit on Sunday mornings and walk alone to Park Place Baptist Church. The pastor, Reverend Dexter Blevins, said the boy was there “every time the door opened.” The boy sensed, maybe from observing the behavior of the two immature adults in his small universe, that it was important that he go to church in order to “to try to be a good person.”
His mother agreed with her young son’s decision to find God, encouraging him to go every week, even though she and her husband made it only on Christmas and Easter.
The claim will shock his detractors today, but there were some who thought that the young Clinton would grow up to be a minister.
A moderate Democrat must, of course, be a religious Democrat. Bill Clinton noted during the campaign that he was such a Democrat. “I pray virtually every day, usually at night, and I read the Bible every week,” he said. He added that he believed strongly in “old- fashioned things” like the “constancy of sin, the possibility of forgiveness, the reality of redemption.” While these words might sound hollow from some candidates, from Clinton they were in line with his long-established beliefs and life experiences.
President Clinton did say he was “solely and completely responsible,” though that stand-up statement seemed to fall by the wayside as he tore into Starr.
Yes, Starr had reported some tawdry personal material. Yet, Bill Clinton, publicly and under oath, had denied the relationship with Lewinsky. Starr had a legal and ethical duty to find and report the details. To this day, Bill Clinton remains angry at Starr.
The incident has hardly been forgotten, especially among observant Christians. Detractors and skeptics of Bill’s faith never cease to bring it up, always eager to denounce Bill as a hypocrite.
In an interview for this book, Wogaman confirmed that Bill, not Hillary, was the impetus. Wogaman confirms that Bill, in addition to his regular church attendance, was meeting once a week with personal spiritual counselors.
Even before the Lewinsky scandal, Campolo says he and Clinton “would get together about once every five or six weeks for a couple of hours.“
Wogaman said they discussed how important faith is in forming our lives. The minister said that through these experiences, he learned that Clinton’s faith was genuine, though Wogaman did carefully concede that ”you can never entirely read into the heart of a person.“
In his first session with the God Squad, Bill opened his Bible and read his favorite passage from Isaiah. Wogaman perceived that Clinton was ”very familiar with the Bible.
Marian Wright Edelman wrote to Bill: “Do you think the Old Testament prophets Isiah, Micah, & Amos--or Jesus Christ--would support such policies?” It was a display of moral arrogance by Edelman. Sure, Jesus wanted Christians to help the poor, as Christian Republicans and Democrats knew, but nowhere in the Gospel did the Messiah weigh in on whether he preferred centralizing or decentralizing Medicaid.
Bill Clinton signed the bill. In response, Edelman’s husband, Peter, resigned his post in the Department of Health and Human Services saying this was “the worst thing Bill Clinton had done.” Contrary to Edelman’s predictions, welfare-reform proved an enormous success, maybe the greatest domestic achievement of Clinton’s presidency.
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The above quotations are from God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life, by Paul Kengor. Click here for main summary page. Click here for a profile of Bill Clinton. Click here for Bill Clinton on all issues.
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