CLINTON'S SINS: IMPIOUS, NOT POLITICAL
By Forrest Church. The Rev. Forrest Church is minister of All Souls Church in New York City.
From: Newsday (New York, NY)
December 3, 1998, Thursday, ALL EDITIONS
IF THE Republicans in Congress are hell-bent on murder-suicide - bringing both the president and themselves down - my guess is that only their second bullet will find its mark.
You can understand their frustration. The president has sinned. Even worse, having lied and been caught, he keeps dancing on the coals.
As much as they try to twist his lying about sex into a matter of state, the subtext here is religious, not political. Ours is a profoundly religious nation. From the founding of our country until today, we have placed our leader's morals closer to the center of our national debate than in any other democracy. But until today, we had the good sense to keep the zealots on the sidelines. If we had not, articles of impeachment could have been introduced against almost every one of our presidents.
Rep. Thomas DeLay (R-Texas) suggested recently that if we cannot impeach the president for lying - whether about sex or campaign finance - not only our own country but all of civilization will somehow suffer. Even placing adultery aside, which, for practical purposes the Republicans seem to have done, this is a religious statement, not a political one.
The point of law they cling to is lying under oath. Until now we have had the good sense never to put one of our presidents under oath to see if he is lying. Apart from impeaching the entire presidency, not to mention Abraham, Jacob and King David, such an imposition of morality on politics is completely unsustainable.
I invite the Religious Right and their Republican servants to go back to the Bible. What makes their flawed heroes any different from our flawed president?
"Abraham," the Pharaoh asked, "is Sarah your sister? May I therefore lay with her?"
"Yes," he lied.
"Are you truly Esau, my first born and heir, that I may bless you?" Isaac asked.
"Yes," Jacob lied.
And David sent his mistress husband to the front lines to die in battle in order to marry her.
It would take far more than a column to list presidential lies far worse than those told by President Bill Clinton. Does this exonerate him? No. Not before God. But when members of Congress start playing God, judging where Jesus might suggest they should not dare to judge, this religious nation toys with inquisition.
President George Washington was the first of our nation's leaders to be arrested according to religious law. On a Sunday morning in December, 1789, he was arrested on his way to church. According to a report in the Dec. 16 Massachusetts Sentinel, Washington lost his way riding through Connecticut. Having agreed to attend worship in New York the next morning, he awakened early, mounted his horse and took off at a fast clip toward the New York-Connecticut border.
What Washington neglected to consider - or chose to overlook - was that riding at full speed in Connecticut on a Sunday was against the law. Before he crossed the border, an alert tithingman (a religious cop) halted the president, and cited him for violating the local Sabbath statutes.
My guess is that Washington did worse things than this during the course of his presidency, but I am grateful that Kenneth Starr was not the tithingman. For when the tithingman discovered that it was the president who had sinned, he let him go.
Back then and almost until today, the president has often been above the law. Even the special prosecutor who was looking for dirt on Richard Nixon left much of it under the rug.
Yet, in Clinton's case, his crimes are close to being underneath the law - lying about a sexual indiscretion in a civil case that was subsequently thrown out of court, and then repeating that lie to a special prosecutor who received the information in a questionable way. Fortunately, most Americans get away with such low crimes and misdemeanors.
But today's tithingmen are different from those in Washington's time. They are more like God's prosecuting attorney in the Book of Job. He tried first to do in Job by destroying his wealth, then his family and finally his health. A good enough prosecutor can get anyone on something.
Finally, Job broke and cursed God. God's prosecuting attorney, Satan, had won his case.
If Bill Clinton is not as good a man as Job, we can be thankful that Kenneth Starr is not as good a prosecutor as Satan. Bill Clinton will not break. And that will be good for our country.
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