wfn.org | Clinton urges help for debt relief, AIDS at prayer breakfast

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

Sept. 15, 2000  News media contact: Tim Tanton·(615)742-5470·Nashville,
Tenn.  10-21-71B{413}

By Gretchen Hakola*

WASHINGTON (UMNS) -- Amid a presidential campaign in which the appropriate
role of religion is a front-and-center issue, President Clinton held his
eighth prayer breakfast at the White House and said the annual event has had
"enormously beneficial consequences."

Clinton told the 120 religious leaders gathered Sept. 14 in the State Dining
Room that he hoped his administration's legacy includes a fierce devotion to
religious liberty. He said he had told first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
that morning that always disagreeing with someone is not right. He advised
her, he said, to find something to agree about with Rick Lazio, her
Republican opponent in the New York Senate race.

"There is a spot in the human soul that's not perfect," said Clinton, who
apologized at last year's breakfast for his relationship with Monica
Lewinsky. "Fear of the other is the oldest problem for humans." 

Do we deal with the incompatibilities or see our commonalities as more
fundamental in the eyes of God? he asked. By example, he cited the role that
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) played in arguing for passage of hate crimes
legislation. Smith talked on the Senate floor about the biblical story in
which Jesus stopped a hate crime by halting those who were about to stone a
woman for adultery.

Jim Winkler, general secretary-designate of the United Methodist Board of
Church and Society, said Clinton asked religious leaders to help seek
greater congressional appropriations for fighting AIDS, malaria and
tuberculosis, for providing debt relief to the world's poorest nations, and
for enacting a tax credit to help develop vaccines. 

"As Americans, we have, I think, a truly unique opportunity and a very
profound responsibility to do something now on debt relief, disease and
education beyond our borders," Clinton said. He vowed to dig in his heels
until Congress approves the funding. "I'm the only one (in Washington) not
running, so I don't care if they ever go home," he quipped.

Clinton said the three priorities that he had failed to accomplish were
brokering peace in Kashmir, settling the tug-of-war between Turkey and
Greece over Cyprus, and furthering U.S. relations with Cuba. In foreign
policy, he said, "the trick is to know who you are, but don't become
tone-deaf and insensitive." One needed to have integrity and not become "an
instrument of inhumanity," he said.

The administration also is working on an initiative to ensure that every
school child in the world's poorest countries receives at least one free
meal a day, Clinton said. The cost would be about $3 billion to $4 billion
to feed every such child for a year.

Besides Winkler, other United Methodists at the breakfast included Council
of Bishops President William B. Oden; Edward G. Matthews, retired pastor of
First United Methodist Church in Little Rock, Ark., where Hillary and
Chelsea Clinton hold membership; and J. Philip Wogaman, pastor of Foundry
United Methodist Church in Washington, which the Clintons attend. Wogaman
gave the benediction.

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*Hakola is program director of communications at the United Methodist Board
of Church and Society.

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United Methodist News Service
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