Clinton urges help for debt relief, AIDS at prayer breakfast
9/15/2000 News media contact: Tim Tanton · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn. 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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