Top Democrats open up on faith

Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all got personal last night during a forum focused on something much less commonly mentioned on the campaign trail: their religious faith.

During a wide-ranging discussion, each Democrat took the stage to discuss their views on religion, values and poverty. But the three front-runners for their party’s 2008 nomination also fielded questions much more personal in nature about their sins and prayer habits.

Mrs. Clinton, a senator from New York, told the audience of 1,300 that her faith helped her survive her husband’s infidelity when he was in the White House.

“I’m not sure I would have gotten through it without my faith,” the former first lady said.

“I am very grateful that I had a grounding in faith that gave me the courage and the strength to do what I thought was right regardless of what the world thought,” she said, to sustained applause. “And that’s all one can expect or hope for.”

She added that her “extended faith family” acted as “prayer warriors for me.”

When asked his biggest sin, Mr. Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, said there were too many to name.

“If I have a day where I haven’t sinned multiple times, I would be amazed,” he said.

The 2004 Democratic vice-presidential nominee also said God helped him in dark times, saying, “My faith came roaring back” when his family faced crisis and still “gives me strength to keep going.”

He needed his faith when he lost his son and during his wife’s ongoing battle against cancer. Elizabeth Edwards received loud applause as she was seated before the forum.

Mr. Obama, a senator from Illinois, gave the most political answers of the trio, and the forum gave him a chance to clarify what some have said is an inconsistency in his position about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

When asked whether God takes sides in a war, Mr. Obama quoted Abraham Lincoln as saying that “we shouldn’t ask whose side God is on, but whether we’re on His side.” He added there is evil in the world — as seen in the September 11 terrorist attacks — and said he sees it in the detention camp in Guantanamo and in the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

On Israel, Mr. Obama said Palestinians “have to recognize Israel’s right to exist; they have to renounce violence and terrorism as a tool to achieve their political ends; they have to abide by agreements.”

He said “faith can inform what we do” both internationally and domestically.

“Faith can say, forgive someone who has treated us unjustly. Faith can say that, regardless of what’s happened in the past, there’s a brighter future ahead,” he said.

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