Clinton's Fellowship Church caused her to support damaging Right Wing legislation

[powergirl]

"The Fellowship" church is home to Clinton, Santorum, Brownback, Ashcroft, and many other delightful characters.
Let me disclose that I support Obama. That said, why is Sen. Clinton bringing up pastors/churches when this BS is lurking.

Not only is she a member of a wacko congregation - that part doesn't bother me so much. But she allowed her membership to support and vote for bills that are contrary to the interests of the Democratic constituency. Why is she running as a Democrat?

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html

All quotations are from the Mother Jones article listed above;

A few salient points:

1. Elite folks are pre ordained by God to be in charge. Much like Bushes claim that God, the Father, put him in the presidency.

"The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan."

"Clinton's sense of divine guidance has been noted by others: Bishop Richard Wilke, who presided over the United Methodist Church of Arkansas during her years in Little Rock, told us, "If I asked Hillary, 'What does the Lord want you to do?' she would say, 'I think I'm called by the Lord to be in public service at whatever level he wants me.'"



2. Sen. Clinton has complicated Pastor Coe, from the Fellowship.

"Coe, she writes, "is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

3. The Fellowship's agenda is to promote Right Wing legislation.

"The Fellowship isn't out to turn liberals into conservatives; rather, it convinces politicians they can transcend left and right with an ecumenical faith that rises above politics. Only the faith is always evangelical, and the politics always move rightward."

"This is in line with the Christian right's long-term strategy. Francis Schaeffer, late guru of the movement, coined the term "cobelligerency" to describe the alliances evangelicals must forge with conservative Catholics. Colson, his most influential disciple, has refined the concept of cobelligerency to deal with less-than-pure politicians. In this application, conservatives sit pretty and wait for liberals looking for common ground to come to them. Clinton, Colson told us, "has a lot of history" to overcome, but he sees her making the right moves."

4. Sen. Clinton has supported right wing legislation.

"With Santorum, Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn't back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobs—say, pharmacists who won't fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won't guard abortion clinics."

"Clinton has championed federal funding of faith-based social services, which she embraced years before George W. Bush did; Marci Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel, says that the Clintons' approach to faith-based initiatives "set the stage for Bush." Clinton has also long supported the Defense of Marriage Act, a measure that has become a purity test for any candidate wishing to avoid war with the Christian right."

5. Sen. Clinton does not follow through on legislation that helps women, gays, and immigrants because of this church.

"Liberal rabbi Michael Lerner, whose "politics of meaning" Clinton made famous in a speech early in her White House tenure, sees the senator's ambivalence as both more and less than calculated opportunism. He believes she has genuine sympathy for liberal causes—rights for women, gays, immigrants—but often will not follow through. "There is something in her that pushes her toward caring about others, as long as there's no price to pay. But in politics, there is a price to pay."

6. Sen. Brownback loves Sen. Clinton now that she is in The Fellowship.

"Senator Brownback understood the temptation. He used to hate Clinton so much, he told us, that the hate hurt. Then came the Clintons' 1994 National Prayer Breakfast appearance with Mother Teresa, who upbraided the couple for their pro-choice views. Bill made no attempt to conceal his anger, but Hillary took it and smiled. Brownback remembers thinking, "Now, there's gotta be a great lesson here." He didn't know what it was until Clinton got to the Senate and joined him in supporting DeLay's Day of Reconciliation resolution following the 2000 election, a proposal described by its backers as a call to "pray for our leaders." Now, Brownback considers Clinton "a beautiful child of the living God."

:puke:


:puke:

[Deep13]

1. I don't believe you or that article.

There is no way that HC is a Fundy. By the way, the description you cite is pretty much a description of Christianity what with the elites chosen by god and whatnot. It is right in Paul's epistles.

[atreides1]

3. Well If you Don't Believe it

Find something to refute it! Instead of just providing a personal viewpoint defend your belief.

[powergirl]

5. I've noticed that many Clinton supporters just say it didn't happen

It reminds me of Willie Nelson, when confronted by his wife who caught him red handed with another woman. He said "Are you going to believe what I say or your lyin' eyes."

[powergirl]

4. You don't need to believe me, read the article

It's from Mother Jone's Magazine - not American Spectator, newsmax or Fox News. These are facts and they are horrific to the party and to our country. I didn't want to believe it either. The bills she supported can be verified. The article is four pages long, you may want to read it.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html

[KaryninMiami]

6. I didn't want to believe it either - so if you do have some actual, factual info to dispute this,

PLEASE share it with us- and with Mother Jones magazine (and the rest of the reporters and journalists who have been writing about this for a while now). I'm sure it will be a welcome bit of information for everyone to read.

For the rest of us however, who do believe in the credibility of sources like Mother Jones, this is the kind of information that needs to be sent and resent to the MSM. I heard that there was a short story by Andrea Mitchell today on MSNBC- but frankly, as long as Hillary insists on not letting the Pastor Wright story fade, this story also needs to be broadcast to the American public who have every right to know about all of the candidates' spiritual advisers.

Same thing about the religious nuts McCain is relying on for "spiritual guidance"-- we need to be aggressive here and make sure that there is equal coverage of all candidates.

I'm so sick of the Wright soundbites- and so furious that in desperation, this is the only thing the Clinton campaign has to throw out there and that the MSM keeps letting them do just that.

[FrenchieCat]

7. There's more than "that" article!

Much more!

what may startle people, including her supporters, is that the group she has associated herself with since 1993 which sponsors these groups as well as the National Prayer Breakfast is very conservative and exclusive. Known now as the Fellowship, it is a group that reporter Sharlet knows very well given his past investigative pieces in Harper's Magazine several years ago, and a Rolling Stone piece about Sam Brownback in 2006. Digby has written about this group as well. Even though Mother Jones will not post the piece online until Tuesday, I have been given permission to post segments of the piece in the extended entry. I encourage all of you to buy the current issue and read the piece for yourselves, because Hillary’s association with the Fellowship may lead some to question her judgment and true beliefs, given what the group stands for. http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/010937.php

Hotline-- Sept 2006

Hillary Clinton: The Faith Angle

Hillary Clinton’s hiring of “faith guru” Burns Strider as an adviser to her presumptive presidential campaign, reported two days ago in the Hotline, draws some rare attention to Clinton’s religiosity, as yet unexamined in the same way that ’08 heavyweights like Mitt Romney and, through his high-profile meeting with Pastor Rick Warren, Barack Obama have been.

In Clinton’s case, there’s plenty to examine: religion seems to be the only part of her life that hasn’t undergone rigorous scrutiny.

Though Strider, as a onetime staff member for Nancy Pelosi, is squarely in the liberal camp, Clinton is part of not one, but two, prayers groups with distinctly conservative bents: an exclusive Senate prayer group that meets on Wednesday mornings, and a women’s prayer group that she’s been a part of since her early White House days. The women’s group is run by Holly Leachman, a layperson at the McLean Bible Church in Virginia, itself magnet for prominent conservatives, including former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, Republican senators John Thune and James Inhofe, as well as several Bush staffers and their families.

Leach's prayer group includes many prominent Republican wives, among them Susan Baker, wife of Iraq Study Group co-chairman James Baker, who along with Leachman ministered to Hillary Clinton in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. (Leachman, mentioned briefly in Clinton’s memoir, Living History, is the wife of Washington Redskins chaplain Jerry Leachman).

Most of the prayer groups are informally affiliated with a secretive Christian organization called the Fellowship, established in the 1930s by a Methodist evangelist named Abraham Vereide, whose great hope was to preach the word of Jesus to political and business leaders throughout the world. Vereide believed that the best way to change the powerful was through discreet personal ministry, and over his lifetime he succeeded to a remarkable degree. The first Senate prayer group met over breakfast in 1943; a decade later one of its members, Senator Frank Carlson, persuaded Dwight Eisenhower to host a Presidential Prayer Breakfast, which has become a tradition.
<>
Hillary Clinton’s proficiency in this innermost sanctum has unnerved some of the capital’s most exalted religious conservatives. “You’re not talking about some tree-hugging, Jesus-is-my-Buddha sort of stuff,” says David Kuo, a former Bush official in the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, who worked with Clinton to promote joint legislation and who, like Brownback, has apologized to her for past misdeeds. “These are powerful evangelicals she’s meeting with.” Like many conservatives, they are caught between warring dictates of their faith: the religious one, which requires them to embrace a fellow Christian, and the political one, more powerful in some, which causes them to instinctively distrust the motives of a Clinton. Everyone in Washington experiences their dilemma at one time or another—the lack of an Archimedean point from which to judge Hillary Clinton.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200611/green-hillary

[Hugabear]

8. Please tell us why Hillary chooses to pray with such extreme right-wingers

There are PLENTY of progressive Christians in Congress that she could choose to associate and pray with. Why would she align herself with such extreme fundamentalists like Sam Brownback?

[bunnies]

15. So... you reject reality?

Let me guess... its a vast rw conspiracy. :rofl:

[roguevalley]

16. That magazine is the gold standard for truth. You don't believe

it? Sheesh. Paul said that everyone is equal. Look it up. She is part of a cult. She goes to segregated meetings with shits. Don't believe it. It won't be any less true.

[Mme. Defarge]

2. As the Church Lady would say,

"How conveeeeeeeeeenient."

"Brownback remembers thinking, "Now, there's gotta be a great lesson here." He didn't know what it was until Clinton got to the Senate and joined him in supporting DeLay's Day of Reconciliation resolution following the 2000 election, a proposal described by its backers as a call to "pray for our leaders."

[Beregond2]

9. Church?

As I understand it, "The Fellowship" isn't a church, but an evangelical prayer group for political figures in Washington DC. I very much doubt that HRC has any religious convictions at all. I would guess she sees a political advantage in being part of this. Her recent statements about how she would never have attended a church with a pastor like Wright strike me as entirely accurate. The last thing she would do is align herself with a group that actually holds politicians and Americans in general accountable for their policies and actions. For her, religion is just one more avenue to power.

[powergirl]

10. The article talks about the faith of the "Fellowship" as

being of a Calvinist doctrine. She has also talked about her being a Methodist, etc. Did I mention that Macaca was a member too? :)

[ClassWarrior]

12. Whatever her motivations, she's apparently been fraternizing with the enemy...

...on a weekly basis for years.

NGU.

[City Lights]

14. Here's more to read about Hillary and religion:

God Is a Centrist Democrat
Hillary Clinton moves self, whole party into the religious middle
by Kristen Lombardi
February 22nd, 2005 12:00 AM

If it's true that the Democratic Party is about to get religion, then Hillary Clinton is first at the altar. Much has been made of Clinton's newly softened image—the way she tore down her old liberal icon and got spiritual over abortion, for instance. She told an Albany crowd on January 24 that abortion represents "a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women," and singled out "religious and moral values" as an antidote to teenage sex. Never mind the New York junior senator's continued advice that pro-choice activists find "common ground" with their anti-abortion counterparts. Pundits chalked up the putative presidential candidate's remarks to a post-election Democratic shift to the center. After all, the only way to win national office anymore is to move to the middle, and these days that means getting serious about God and guns.

And sure enough, there she was, getting cozy with Republican maverick John McCain on NBC's Meet the Press last week, as he said she'd make "a good president." She played commander in chief, going out of her way to disagree with the hard-left wing of her own party by insisting that the troops must stay in Iraq to keep the insurgents at bay.

Yet for all the notice of Clinton's centrist tone and morality-speak on the national stage, her New York constituents largely missed the senator's real debut as a God-fearing Middle American. It came in a January 19 speech in Boston that made headlines there, with Clinton appearing in a Globe photograph alongside the host, Reverend Eugene Rivers III, one of the state's most outspoken opponents of same-sex marriage.

Clinton had traveled there to attend a benefit for Rivers's youth-outreach program, known as the National Ten Point Leadership Foundation, which promotes faith-based solutions to gang violence and urban crime. At the event, attended by many of the city's prominent black ministers, the senator celebrated the foundation's street ministry to at-risk kids. But she also used the opportunity to demonstrate her commitment to a key issue in the culture wars, the role of faith in addressing social ills like poverty and hunger. Listen to her praise faith-based initiatives:

"There is a lot that needs to be done, and there is an unnecessary debate in our country about how to do it. It does not matter whether it is inspired by faith, inspired by obligation, inspired by family, or inspired by threat of a federal indictment. The work is what is important. . . . And there is no contradiction between faith based, community based, faith inspired, government inspired—we are all in this together, and we need to provide support for the ongoing work."

Clinton didn't stop with that. She invoked God's name a half-dozen times—thanking God for the Ten Point's faithful soldiers, commending those who "see God at work in the lives of even the most hopeless and left-behind of our children." And she made plain her religious credentials:

"People often ask me whether I'm a praying person, and I say I was lucky enough to be raised in a praying family, and learned to say my prayers as a very young child, and remembered seeing my late father by the side of his bed until his very last days saying his prayers. So I was fortunate. But I also say that had I not been a praying person, that after I'd been in the White House for a few months, I would have become a praying person."

Her strategy in trying to sound like the second coming of John Wesley is clear. "She's trying to re-create her Northeast liberal image and move to the center," says Saint Louis University political science professor Kenneth Warren. A longtime Democratic pollster, he says big-ticket social items have clearly hurt the party. "The only way to win the presidency in 2008 is to be perceived as more moderate and sympathetic on moral values."

Clinton may have been the first leading Democrat to start talking religion in public after the Bush victory. But her recent speeches are part of a growing conversation within the party on how to rebuild after the disastrous 2004 election. Democrats recognize a need to close the God gap among religious voters who've come to see the Republicans as their only possible pick. The Democrats' answer? Soften the party's secular image on divisive cultural issues, such as abortion.

In recent weeks Jim Wallis, a left-leaning evangelical Christian preacher and editor of Sojourners magazine, has twice visited Democrats on Capitol Hill. In February, he reportedly instructed Senate press secretaries on how to "discuss the budget in terms of moral values." He believes Democrats need to change the focus from culturally divisive issues like abortion and gay marriage to, say, war and poverty. Those are also religious issues.

more... http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0509,lombardi1,61604,6.html

[TrogL]

11. Welcome to "Word Faith"

Rich people are holy.
Why are they holy? Because they're rich.

[powergirl]

13. Isn't that like the Kabbalah religion?

n/t

[roguevalley]

17. no.

[LisaM]

18. She is part of the Senate prayer group, which, not surprisingly, comprises mostly Republicans

The leader of that group is associated with the Fellowship. That does not mean that Hillary herself belongs to the Fellowship. I think that the question should be asked, but I do not think she is part of that group, just the prayer group. I read the article in the Atlantic Monthly, and it says that Coe is part of the Fellowship, but does not state that Hillary belongs.

[K Gardner]

19. You really need to read more..

At the time Hillary began running for President, she had graduated into Coe's most Elite Cell: The Senate Prayer Breakfast.

Sharlet should know. He is the author of a previous book on The Family and formerly went undercover as a member of their sect. The house he describes in detail is one Clinton wrote about in Living History. She describes her first encounter with Fellowship leader Doug Coe at a 1993 lunch with her prayer cell at the Cedars, the Fellowship's majestic estate on the Potomac. Coe, she writes, "is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

Sharlet responds to Ehrenreich's article on Clinton, Coe & Co. "dangerous theology":
03/19/2008 @ 11:29pm

I'm grateful to Barbara Ehrenreich for reading my book and recommending it here in The Nation, but I'd jump in on this regardless. She's right to describe a group whose leader distorts Jesus like so--"You say, hey, you know Jesus said, 'You got to put Him before mother-father-brother-sister'? Hitler, Lenin, Mao, that's what they taught the kids. Mao even had the kids killing their own mother and father. But it wasn't murder. It was for building the new nation. The new kingdom"--as "fascist-leaning." Actions matter more than words, of course, which is why The Family's active support for the late and very murderous dictator Suharto, as reported in my book, based on The Family's documents; and its interventions during the 1980s on behalf of death squad leaders, as reported by the LA Times--presents even stronger evidence for describing the group as "fascist-leaning." One could go further--in the book, I dedicate a chapter to The Family's postwar efforts to bring together former Nazis with American Congressmembers.

Of course, that doesn't mean Hillary, who writes gushingly of the group in her memoir, is fascist-leaning any more, than Obama's friendship with Jeremiah Wright means that he, too, believes that perhaps white people invented AIDS. But Wright's, and Obama's, roots are in liberation theology, regardless of how far afield Wright may go on occasion; Hillary's are in a conservative interpretation of neo-orthodoxy that has allowed her to seek spiritual counsel from as authoritarian a thinker as Doug Coe. To me, that's a problem, not a conspiracy. There's no conspiracy here, just a mixture of bad theology and opaque politics that should be troubling to anyone, left or right, who believes in open democracy. But then, maybe I'm just a conservative--I believe ideas have consequences.

This is hardly tit-for-tat as part of the electoral cycle. Barbara Ehrenreich drew from a book I began back in 2003, with a Harper's story about a month I spent living with The Family. I spent the years in between then and now researching the group. Hillary emerged as part of the story as early as 2003. The piece certainly wasn't intended as a hatchet job--I actually voted for Hillary, months after Kathryn Joyce and I wrote the MoJo piece Ehrenreich refers to, on the strength of her health plan vs. Obama's. I've since been won over to Obama's camp, but that's beside the point--everything here is documented, and, for that matter, almost all public record. Put the electoral cycle aside and ask yourself: What do you think of public officials seeking spiritual solace in a group that repeatedly praises Hitler as a leadership model? They're not Nazis--they consider Hitler an evil man. The problem, they believe, is that he put himself where Jesus should be. Huh. Somehow, I don't imagine Jesus wanted to be a fhrer. There's no conspiracy here; just some very dangerous theology. And that's plenty bad enough.

Jeff Sharlet
Brooklyn, NY

Sharlet addressed the matter of Hillary's involvement in The Family in his infamous Mother Jones article:

But the senator's project isn't the conversion of her adversaries; it's tempering their opposition so she can court a new generation of Clinton Republicans, values voters who have grown estranged from the Christian right. And while such crossover conservatives may never agree with her on the old litmus-test issues, there is an important, and broader, common ground—the kind of faith-based politics that, under the right circumstances, will permit majority morality to trump individual rights. The libertarian Cato Institute recently observed that Clinton is "adding the paternalistic agenda of the religious right to her old-fashioned liberal paternalism." Clinton suggests as much herself in her 1996 book, It Takes a Village, where she writes approvingly of religious groups' access to schools, lessons in Scripture, and "virtue" making a return to the classroom.

Then, as now, Clinton confounded secularists who recognize public faith only when it comes wrapped in a cornpone accent. Clinton speaks instead the language of nondenominationalism—a sober, eloquent appreciation of "values," the importance of prayer, and "heart" convictions—which liberals, unfamiliar with the history of evangelical coalition building, mistake for a tidy, apolitical accommodation, a personal separation of church and state. Nor do skeptical voters looking for political opportunism recognize that, when Clinton seeks guidance among prayer partners such as Coe and Brownback, she is not so much triangulating—much as that may have become second nature—as honoring her convictions. In her own way, she is a true believer.

[ClassWarrior]

20. .

[RememberWellstone]

21. OMG!!

It's just like Wright! It's just like Wright and sitting under a hate-filled racist for 20 years! It is the same thing! OMG, man the lifeboats boyz and girlz Hillary is a religious extremist!:eyes:

[powergirl]

22. No, it's worse

She allowed The Fellowship to influence her job as a senator and supported conservative Right Wing bills that became law. That is offensive to democrats and to our country. Are you pround of these right wing bills that Sen. Clinton supported?