News
and Opinion
The following was
an opinion piece published in New York Newsday.
Forrest
Church
December
3, 1998
If the Republicans
in Congress are hell-bent on murder-suicide -- bringing both the president
and themselves down -- my guess is that only their second bullet will
find its mark.
You can understand
their frustration. The president has sinned. Even worse, having lied
and been caught, he keeps dancing on the coals.
As much as they
try to twist his lying about sex into a matter of state, the subtext
here is religious, not political. Ours is a profoundly religious nation.
From the founding of our country until today, we have placed our leader's
morals closer to the center of our national debate than in any other
democracy.
But until today,
we had the good sense to keep the zealots on the sidelines. If we had
not, articles of impeachment could have been introduced against almost
every one of our presidents.
Congressman Thomas
DeLay suggested recently that if we cannot impeach a president for lying
-- whether about sex or campaign finance -- not only our own country
but all of civilization will somehow suffer. Even placing adultery aside,
which for practical purposes the Republicans seem to have done, this
is a religious statement, not a political one.
The point of law
they cling to is lying under oath. Until now we have had the good sense
never to put one of our presidents under oath to see if he is lying.
Apart from impeaching the entire presidency, not to mention Abraham,
Jacob, and King David, such an imposition of morality on politics is
completely unsustainable.
I invite the Religious
Right and their Republican servants to go back to the Bible. What makes
their flawed heroes any different from our flawed president?
"Abraham,"
the Pharaoh asked, "is Sarah your sister? May I therefore lay with
her?" "Yes," he lied.
"Are you truly
Esau, my first born and heir, that I may bless you?" Isaac asked.
"Yes," Jacob lied.
And David sent
his mistress's husband to the front lines to die in battle in order
to marry her.
It would take far
more than a column to list presidential lies far worse than those told
by President Clinton. Does this exonerate him? No. Not before God. But
when Congress starts playing God, judging where Jesus might suggest
they should not dare to judge, this religious nation toys with inquisition.
President Washington
was the first of our nation's leaders to be arrested according to religious
law. On a Sunday morning in December, 1789, he was arrested on his way
to church. According to a report in the December 16 Massachusetts Centinel,
Washington lost his way riding through Connecticut. Having agreed to
attend worship in New York the next morning, he awakened early, mounted
his horse, and took off at a fast clip toward the New York- Connecticut
border.
What Washington
neglected to consider -- or chose to overlook -- was that riding at
full speed in Connecticut on a Sunday was against the law. Before he
crossed the border, an alert tithingman (a religious cop) halted the
president, and cited him for violating the local Sabbath statutes.
My guess is that
President Washington did worse things than this during the course of
his presidency, but I am grateful that Kenneth Starr was not the tithingman.
For when the tithingman discovered that it was the president who had
sinned, he let him go.
Back then and almost
until today, the president has often been above the law. Even the special
prosecutor who was looking for dirt on Richard Nixon left much of it
under the rug.
Yet, in President
Clinton's case, his crimes are close to being underneath the law --
lying about a sexual indiscretion in a civil case that was subsequently
thrown out of court, and then repeating that lie to a special prosecutor
who received the information in a questionable way. Fortunately, most
Americans get away with such low crimes and misdemeanors.
But today's tithingmen
are different than in Washington's time. They are more like God's prosecuting
attorney in the Book of Job. He tried first to do in Job by destroying
his wealth, then his family, and finally his heath. A good enough prosecutor
can get anyone on something.
Finally Job broke
and cursed God. God's prosecuting attorney, Satan, had won his case.
If Bill Clinton
is not as good a man as Job, we can be thankful that Ken Starr is not
as good a prosecutor as Satan. Bill Clinton will not break. And that
will be good for our country.
© All Souls 1998
