wfn.org | Clinton crisis prompts books of religious comment

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Dec. 16, 1998	Contact: Joretta Purdue((202)546-8722(Washington   {743}

NOTE: Photos are available with this story.

WASHINGTON (UMNS) -  From the Eye of the Storm: A Pastor to the
President Speaks Out does not violate any pastoral confidences, its
author is the first to insist, but the Rev. J. Philip Wogaman is
uniquely situated to analyze and comment on the problems of the
presidency and the society.

How the impeachment question is being handled adds to the definition of
the society, according to this United Methodist clergyman, whose area of
specialty for 30 years has been ethics. Saying he wrote the book as a
contribution to the national debate, Wogaman urges an examination of the
relationship between love and law.

Before 1992 when he became senior pastor at the church attended by the
first family, Foundry United Methodist Church, Wogaman was a professor
of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary. He is a long time
observer of the Washington scene.

"The present crisis seems almost like a struggle for the soul of our
society," Wogaman said at a Dec. 15 press conference held by the
publisher, Westminster John Knox Press. "I view the sexual sins of the
president, and the resultant efforts to cover them up, as an expression
of a much more pervasive looseness about sexual life in our society. . .
. But the basis of morality is love, and moral recovery cannot be done
in an unloving way."

Wogaman explained that the whole society is "permeated by cheapened
attitudes toward sex." This means, he said, that God's "good gift" of
sex is disconnected from love.

In response to a question, Wogaman said that forgiveness does not imply
that there should be no consequences. The question in this case is "what
those consequences should be." 

Wogaman advocates a public reprimand or censure by Congress without
partisan exploitation or mean-spiritedness.  His advice to Congress on
the impeachment vote is "Don't be political about this."

Royalties on his book will be donated to charity,  Wogaman said, because
he considers it inappropriate to profit from the president's crisis in
any way.

^From the Eye of the Storm is one of  at least two books rushed into
print to provide commentary on the president's predicament. One other,
Judgment Day at the White House, is a collection of essays based on a
"Declaration Concerning Religion, Ethics and the Crisis in the Clinton
Presidency," which argues the inseparability of personal and public
morality. This book was released on Dec. 10.

Among its essays are two written by faculty at United Methodist
seminaries.

Stanley Hauerwas, a professor of theological ethics at the Divinity
School of Duke University, asks, "How could anyone go through a campaign
for president, and still pretend to be a truth teller?"   In his essay,
startlingly titled, "Why Clinton Is Incapable of Lying: A Christian
Analysis", the United Methodist layman asserts that politicians do not
have souls sufficient to make them liars, because that would require an
understanding of truth. 

Churches have failed to make of  Clinton the Christian he ought to be,
Hauerwas asserts. "The question before Christians is not whether Bill
Clinton should be impeached, but why he is not excommunicated."

The Rev. Robert Jewett, a professor of New Testament interpretation at
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, raises the biblical concept of
honoring political leaders, as well as parents and spouses, and what the
Bible says must be done to merit honor. He maintains that in this case,
the bond of honor and trust has been broken.

"Our system can readily survive the departure of a brilliant political
leader who has forfeited public trust," Jewett asserts in his essay on
confession and forgiveness in the public sphere. "But we cannot survive
the abandonment of trust itself."

Judgment at the White House contains the declaration, 11 essays by
signers of the declaration, six essays by critics of the declaration and
three by national columnists. It also reprints President Clinton's Aug.
17 testimony to the grand jury  and his speech at the Religious Leaders'
Prayer Breakfast on Sept. 17. 

The book was edited by Gabriel Fackre, professor emeritus of Christian
theology at Andover Newton Theological School, and published by William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., a small press specializing in academic and
religious books.

United Methodist News Service
(615)742-5470
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http://www.umc.org/umns/