Charting Hillary Clinton’s beliefs

GOD AND HILLARY CLINTON: A SPIRITUAL LIFE

By Paul Kengor

Harper, $24.95, 352 pages

REVIEWED BY FRANK PERLEY

A modern-day Joan of Arc. The most pivotal woman in all of human history. And

of course, St. Hillary. All are descriptions applied at one time or another to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Many would take issue with such laudatory monikers. But both friend and foe of Mrs. Clinton would agree that she has been one of the most polarizing political figures of her generation, as a former first lady and now as probable Democratic Party nominee for the 2008 presidential election. She has a renowned reputation as a master of political calculation. Less well known is the deeper dimension of her religious beliefs.

But to know Mrs. Clinton is to understand the source of her power. That source is her religious faith, according to historian Paul Kengor in the newly released “God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life.” Through interviews with her pastors and friends in Arkansas and Washington, Mr. Kengor charts the evolution of Mrs. Clinton’s inner life from middle-class Methodist to campus radical to political rainmaker.

Why is it important to understand Hillary’s faith? Because, says Mr. Kengor, a professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pa., her faith is the key indicator of how she intends to capture the presidency in 2008: “I knew that Hillary Clinton was a lifelong, committed Methodist… . She has a strategy to try to appeal to religious voters with the hopes of winning just enough of them to do in 2008 what Al Gore and John Kerry couldn’t in 2000 and 2004: win the White House.”

Mrs. Clinton has ridden the crest of social upheaval in post-war America toward the pinnacle of power. She was born in a suburb of Chicago, to a family committed to Republican politics and Methodist faith, and raised to honor the virtues of self-reliance and Christian activism.

Mr. Kengor, who has written earlier books on the spiritual lives of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, finds she was eager to view the world beyond the confines of white suburbia. An opportunity as a teenager to shake hands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. after a Chicago speech was as a seminal event in her life, awakening her to social injustice just as civil unrest of the 1960s began to sweep the nation.

King’s assassination further radicalized the already discontented nationwide, and it propelled Hillary into leftist activism while studying at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. After graduation, her religious beliefs were superseded by a fervent interest in leftist causes that took her from Yale Law School to Oakland, where she worked for a former Communist Party lawyer, and then to Washington to assist in the prosecution of the Nixon White House. Her religious sensibilities re-emerged, however, when she married committed Baptist Bill Clinton and embraced the Bible Belt atmosphere of Little Rock, Ark.

Mr. Clinton’s infidelities, both as governor in Little Rock and later as president in Washington, prompted Mrs. Clinton to turn to her faith. While Americans endured the spectacle of Mr. Clinton’s impeachment, they also saw Mrs. Clinton as a symbol of the long-suffering spouse and admired her courage in maintaining her dignity under duress. She expressed belief that her tribulations were a matter of divine providence, Mr. Kengor recounts, but some intimates, such as spiritualist Jean Houston, went further, viewing her as a modern-day Joan of Arc.

Living on the edge of private and national turmoil has helped mold Mrs. Clinton into a person of conviction eager to confront the large issues of contemporary America, says Mr. Kengor. He points to her fondness for the dictum of Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, “the world is my parish,” in explaining her commitment to social issues such as universal health care. She is undeterred by her earlier efforts to establish socialized medicine, which failed during her husband’s first term, and she recently unveiled a new health care reform plan on the campaign stump that would require all Americans to purchase health insurance.

But not everyone wants to be a member of Mrs. Clinton’s “parish.” Conservative Americans see, in her grand schemes, the heavy hand of Big Brother rather than the ministering hand of God. While the author makes clear he does not question the sincerity of Mrs. Clinton’s beliefs, he warns that Christian voters “will see a candidate whose religious life is evident, but whose religious politics are in turmoil.”

Incongruous with her commitment to the rights of children, the needy and the oppressed, says Mr. Kengor, is her refusal to recognize the right to life of the unborn. A tortured abortion theology that sees the mother as “moral arbiter” choosing death for her own fetus, he says, is hard to square with a commitment to the God that preaches “Thou shall not kill.”

In his summation, Mr. Kengor contends that the outcome of Hillary Clinton’s White House quest might hinge on a more accommodating approach to abortion. That contention might prove unrealistic, however, especially if her Republican opponent in 2008 is Rudolph Giuliani, who is also pro-choice. Still, there is no dispute that were Hillary to recalculate her views on abortion, it would constitute a remarkable step along an extraordinary spiritual journey.

Frank Perley is articles editor for the Commentary section of The Washington Times.