A Feel-Good Sacrament
Clinton Bares His Soul” declared the Chicago Sun-Times front page, of President Clinton’s August appearance at Willow Creek Community Church for a leadership conference. During the almost 90-minute interview and question-and-answer session led by Willow Creek senior pastor Bill Hybels, the president said he was in a process of “totally rebuilding my life from a terrible mistake that I made,” referring to his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Responding to Hybels’s comment that some people still believe that he never truly apologized for his actions, the president declared that his apology at a National Prayer Breakfast had been “full and adequate.”
But there was little genuine baring of the soul and certainly nothing spiritually edifying taking place at Willow Creek. Sun-Times reporter Ernest Tucker noted that the president “seemed at ease, at times poking fun at himself. The audience applauded and laughed at his Jay Lenolike quips.”
In his Breakpoint radio commentary, Evangelical leader Chuck Colson noted that “you could have mistaken the setting for the ‘Oprah Winfrey Show’.” The president offered “little mention of God and no mention of sin.” Instead, he said in reference to his affair with Lewinsky, “I wake up every day, no matter what anybody says, with this overwhelming sense of gratitude. If I hadn’t been knocked down in the way I was and forced to come to grips with what I’d done and the consequences of it, I might not ever have had to really deal with it a hundred percent.” He also noted, “two-thirds of the American people stuck with me. That’s an incredible thing. . . . In a funny way, when you realize there is nothing left to hide, then it sort of frees you up to what you ought to be doing anyway.”
Colson called the event a “graphic demonstration of the Oprah-izing of American values,” and observed that the president’s words were steeped in the language of American therapeutic culture, in which self-fulfillment reigns and one’s feelings about oneself are not only the center of attention but the only criterion for judgment. But even if “American culture has redefined sin and repentance,” as Colson put it, is it too much to ask that the Church at least maintain the godly definitions? Apparently it is: Clinton left to a standing ovation of 4,500 Christian leaders. (Another 6,000 watched by satellite.)
Even if one accepted the president’s apology, it is fair to ask why Christian leaders would give a standing ovation to a president who at every opportunity has waged war on unborn children. From the very first day of his presidency, when he signed three executive orders against the unborn, until the final year of his presidency, when he struck down a ban against killing viable babies nearly out their mothers’ wombs, Clinton has participated in shedding the blood of innocents. Of this he has never repented or apologized. And this is not to mention his steady promotion of homosexuality as well.
Such is the man who was invited to come to Willow Creek to edify the faithful. This he did by saying things like, “I feel much more at peace than I used to.” Apparently those Christian leaders who gave Clinton a standing ovation also feel at peace with him (more than they used to?) and believe that he has much to teach them about Christian leadership.
Pastor Hybels, a very gifted and influential leader, certainly must have known what he was doing in bringing the president to his church. Hybels has been one of Clinton’s personal spiritual advisors throughout his presidency and for a time has been holding monthly sessions with him, during one of which he invited the president to come to Willow Creek.
When Christians gather together for a spiritual purpose—for the edification of leaders, as was the case here—it is fair to ask what the faithful are supposed to receive. What did Willow Creek Community Church’s leadership think they were offering in the way of spiritual goods? What the faithful got, instead of the instruction in godly leadership they had a right to expect, was seduction.
How could they be so vulnerable to the words of a man said even by his supporters to lie easily? I got my first confirmation of Bill Clinton’s seduction of certain American Evangelicals two summers ago during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. A prominent Evangelical speaker and writer, Philip Yancey, brought up Clinton during a panel discussion at a conference on C. S. Lewis. Some on the panel had criticized other American Evangelicals (and fundamentalists, particularly) for fighting in the “culture wars” on everything from abortion to prayer in the schools to homosexuality.
Addressing the 600-plus (mostly) Evangelicals present, Yancey ended his remarks by informing us that he had been privileged to meet and interview the president privately. And then he told us how Clinton had shared with him an important point, namely, that there is a difference between private morality and public morality. That piece of wisdom was left in our laps by an Evangelical leader as a saying worthy of all acceptance, though it came from a president with obvious self-interest in separating the two.
At Willow Creek not only was similar wisdom placed into the laps of an obliging audience, but its source was brought in to deliver more oracles of the therapeutic feel-good culture live on stage. The standing ovation given to the performance of a ruthlessly pro-abortion president, now facing indictment for obstruction of justice and perjury, marks the triumph of the personal over the moral for those Christian leaders.
James M. Kushiner is the Director of Publications for The Fellowship of St. James and the former Executive Editor of Touchstone.
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