For 22 years, Hillary Clinton has been part of a secretive religious group that seeks to bring Jesus back to Capitol Hill. Is she triangulating—or living her faith?
It was an elegant example of the Clinton style, a maneuver subtle, bold, and banal all at once. During a forum in June, hosted by the evangelical group Sojourners, Hillary Clinton fielded a query about Bill's infidelity: How had her faith gotten her through the Lewinsky ordeal?
Clinton explained that her "very serious" grounding in faith had helped her weather the affair. But she had also relied on an "extended faith family" that came to her aid, "people whom I knew who were literally praying for me in prayer chains, who were prayer warriors for me."
Such references to spiritual warfare might seem like heavy-handed evangelical rhetoric, but it went over well with the Sojourners audience, as did Clinton's call to "inject faith into policy."
Clinton's God talk is more complicated—and more deeply rooted—than either fans or foes would have it, a revelation not just of her determination to out-Jesus the GOP, but of the powerful religious bent in her own political worldview.
Through all of her years in D.C., Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill organization known as THE FAMILY. Her collaborations with far right-wingers like Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grew in part from that organization.
Clinton's faith is grounded in the beliefs she grew up with in Park Ridge, IL, a conservative Chicago suburb where she was active in her church's altar guild, Sunday school, and youth group. In 1961, Hillary met Pastor Don Jones. Jones, a friend of Clinton's to this day, told us he knows "more about Hillary's faith than anybody outside her family."
Jones describes his own theology as neo-Orthodox, guided by the belief that social change should come about slowly and without radical movement. It emerged, he says, as a kind of third way, a reaction against both fundamentalism and the New Deal.
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Edited from http://www.motherjones.com/...
