Members of Bill Clinton’s Baptist faith are quick to point out his
sins, and some are calling for excommunication, and now, his own
Arkansas pastor has called upon Clinton to confess and repent, though
stopping short of expelling Clinton from his congregation.
“The recent admission of immoral conduct by the president is
grievous,” said Rex Horne, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church, where
Clinton has maintained his official membership since 1980. “His actions
are indefensible and inexcusable. They are not, however, unforgivable. I
pray the president will find the grace of God which comes upon
confession of sin and the peace which comes from a restored relationship
with our Lord.”
Horne has previously refused to comment on the accusations and
scandals that have plagued Clinton for years. He refused additional
comment or to answer questions regarding possible action to
excommunicate the president. Decisions regarding membership are left to
local congregations within the Southern Baptist Church
organization.
“Bill Clinton looked the American people in the eye and lied to them
for seven months, then refused to apologize,” said Richard Land,
executive director of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty
Commission. “And there is probably worse news to come,” he predicted in
a statement released by the Arkansas Baptist Convention.
There have been recent predictions that Clinton may also be addicted
to pornography and illegal drugs, according to two different
psychotherapists and the leader of the Religious Freedom Coalition. Dr.
Jerome Levin and Dr. Paul Fick both stated that they
expect it will be learned that Clinton is addicted to sex, pornography,
and perhaps an illegal drug or alcohol.
“The president’s admission of inappropriate behavior jeopardizes his
credibility as an effective leader since it verifies the truth of
accusations he has publicly denied for months. Obviously our nation
faces some critical decisions in the days ahead,” said Greg Kirksey,
president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. He called for
Americans to pray for the first family.
Clinton does not attend a Baptist church in Washington. Hillary
Clinton is a Methodist, and the first family attends the Foundry United
Methodist Church.
“Her favorite church is the Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco,
and it is where she prefers to go for special events. Glide Memorial is
a gay church. You can’t get any more liberal in theology than the Glide
Church,” explained William J. Murray, chairman of the
Religious Freedom Coalition, a Baptist, and the son of famed atheist,
Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
“Both Bill Clinton and I were raised in intensely dysfunctional
homes, in which dishes flew through the air, and cops were coming to the
house. Being raised in that, I thought it was normal. I thought cops
came out to everybody’s house. Bill Clinton was raised in that. He had
an alcoholic stepfather and a mother with problems. It was a classic
dysfunctional family that he was raised in — like mine. There is a
certain pattern of the children that come out of those,” explained
Murray.
At the age of 16, Murray received a case of beer from his mother as a
birthday present. At the age of 33, Murray received help for his
alcoholism through Alcoholics Anonymous and found religion.
Murray agrees with Fick and Levin that Clinton is mentally ill, to
which Murray adds that Clinton is also “spiritually ill.” He claims
Clinton goes to church because it looks good, not because he is really
religious.
“Bill Clinton goes to church because it’s the political thing to do,”
said Dick Morris in a recent interview. Morris was a political
consultant to Clinton and is generally credited for saving the Clinton
presidency after the Republicans took control of Congress and the Senate
in 1994. He was later fired when he admitted to a personal sex scandal.
Recent reports by Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge indicate that
Clinton may have had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky prior to
attending Easter Sunday church services with the First Lady. Murray says
this is an example of the way Clinton believes he can conduct a
spiritual life for show only.
“It’s a sham. It has to be a sham. When it comes to spiritual
compartmentalization you cannot do that. You cannot have God in your
life between 6 a.m. and noon, and then have Monica Lewinsky come into
the Oval Office, do whatever she’s going to do for 30 minutes, and then
put God back in your life at 12:30 and have God in your life until 2.
That doesn’t work. You can’t compartmentalize that. Either you have God
in your life or you don’t,” said Murray.
“Normal people, who have normal emotional states, if something
horrible happens to them at one o’clock in the morning, it’s going to
affect their job performance at 8 a.m. If somebody called you and said a
good friend or a relative had died, and woke you up at 2 o’clock in the
morning to tell you that, you’d still be shaking by the time you sat
down at work.
“But with Bill Clinton,” explained Murray, “let’s take the death of
Vince Foster. He makes some kind of bizarre statement at a party and the
party goes on. There was nothing there. There was no emotion. That shows
not only the overwhelming mental, but spiritual illness. The fact that
this man could continue for the last six months for example, go into a
church building, sit through a pastor’s sermon and then walk out of that
church building, wave the Holy Bible to the press so they could take a
picture of it, knowing all the time that he was violating every tenet
that was inside of that book.”
Clinton is a successful liar because “he can remember every lie that
he has ever told anybody, which has helped him keep his stories straight
and allowed him to get away with so much,” explained Murray. His unique
intellectual ability has also enabled him to pick and choose the Bible
passages he wants to use to justify his addictions.
Clinton told Arkansas State Trooper Larry Patterson that he has read
the Bible and could not find a passage that calls oral sex a sin or
adultery. “The Bible doesn’t say that it’s a sin, it says that it’s an
abomination,” explained Murray of the way Clinton twisted the
meaning of the scriptures he found. “Clinton likes to quote the episode
of Christ at the well with the woman in excusing her sin. He stops at
the line where Christ tells the woman ‘Sin no more.'”
Murray compared Clinton to a psychopath who can kill someone in the
middle of the night and go to work the next morning as if nothing at all
had happened. He said that Clinton is dangerous and needs treatment, a
concern echoed by Fick and Levin.
James Carville, Clinton apologist and spin doctor, has been
well-known for his smear tactics against Clinton’s accusers. He proudly
calls his Education Information Project “Smear Central” and makes no
secret of his plans to discredit Kenneth Starr. Carville
sent out information about past presidents and their alleged sexual
activities to members of the national press. Murray blames Clinton for
the smears made on past presidents, and says Clinton owes them all an
apology.
“He has lowered the moral bar in America,” said Murray. “The amount
of damage has been horrifying. Let’s say that he did go in a treatment
center for 30 days, he could then come back on television in front of
the American people and he could apologize to Thomas Jefferson, he could
apologize to George Washington, and to Franklin D. Roosevelt, to Dwight
Eisenhower, to John Kennedy and to the American people for lowering the
moral bar and for having on television in the newscasts things that
children can’t watch.”
Clinton has been widely criticized for failing to tell the truth
about his relationship with Lewinsky from the very beginning. Fick and
Levin have both claimed that even though Clinton made an admission Aug.
17, he is still in denial. Murray agrees, saying
Clinton must confess fully, receive intense treatment for a month, and
then ask forgiveness.
Clinton’s replacement in Arkansas agrees. Gov. Mike Huckabee, a
Republican,
said he has maintained silence until now because he did not wish to
speculate, and because he did not have all the facts. In a statement
released by the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, Huckabee said it is
now clear that Clinton’s accusers were right.
“I have been asked several times about forgiveness and redemption. We
all need forgiveness, but forgiveness begins with repentance for the sin
and not merely being caught in the sin,” said Huckabee, who also said
the nation needs our prayers.
“If the president will do what is best for the country, he will truly
apologize to the American people and then resign,” said Land.
“The basic question is whether our nation is willing to affirm that
right is right and wrong is wrong in such crucial areas as honesty,
integrity and sexual purity. If so, President Clinton must be held
accountable for his words and actions. If not, our nation will face far
greater crises in the future,” said Trennis Henderson, editor of the
bi-weekly paper “Arkansas Baptist” in his current editorial.
Sex Addicts Anonymous helps those who are willing to admit they have
a problem and are powerless to control it alone. Everyone interviewed
agreed that Clinton is not able to do that.
“If Bill Clinton could control his addiction, his sexual addiction,
he would not have had sex with a girl young enough to be his daughter in
his office. The idea of the most powerful man in the world risking his
position of power over something like sex, alcohol
or drugs. I mean, can you imagine him smoking dope in there? It would be
the same thing. Not necessarily him, but any president. This is the
equivalent of what Bill Clinton has done,” said Murray.