Presidential character, glimpsed through lenses of faith and charity

c. 1996 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Bill Clinton and Bob Dole are in a double bind. The public demands that they make some show of religious belief and give generously to charity _ but questions their motives when they do. When it comes to matters of faith and charity, however, voters have some solid […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Bill Clinton and Bob Dole are in a double bind. The public demands that they make some show of religious belief and give generously to charity _ but questions their motives when they do.

When it comes to matters of faith and charity, however, voters have some solid clues to judging the character of the candidates, including the way candidates talk about their religion and live it, how their votes match their stated beliefs, and how much they give to good causes.


The Clinton and Dole families are far more generous in their charitable contributions than other Americans. If everyone in the United States gave proportionately as much as they do, the country’s charities would be in better shape.

Both candidates also have a long history of church attendance. Just two years ago Clinton and Dole worshiped together quietly at the Foundry United Methodist Church in the heart of urban Washington _ until private worship became political fodder.

That’s when the Institute for Religion and Democracy, a conservative think tank, accused Foundry’s senior pastor, the Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, of “theological and political liberalism” that included welcoming gays and lesbians into the congregation and criticizing the “Contract With America,” a topic Wogaman says he never addressed from the pulpit.

Foundry had hardly experienced a sudden liberal conversion. Gays had been welcome in the church for many years while Dole worshiped there.

Only when Wogaman became “much more visible as a liberal spokesperson” than his predecessor did he incur the wrath of the religious right, according to the Rev. Dennis Campbell, dean of the Duke University Divinity School.

“At that point the association became a political liability for Dole,” says University of Tennessee religion professor Charles Lippy. Elizabeth Dole switched to the National Presbyterian Church, a more conservative Washington congregation. Her husband followed. Clinton, a Southern Baptist, continues to attend Foundry United Methodist with his wife, Hillary, a member of the church.

“I was sorry,” says Wogaman. “I thought it would have been a very powerful symbol to the country if, in just this one instance, two candidates just happened to be in the same local church.”


Dole said little about the political or religious motives behind his departure. Lippy notes that Midwestern Methodists tend to view religion as a private matter. And the Rev. Edward Bauman, who retired from Foundry in 1992, believes that while “God is important” to the senator, Dole does not want to use “religion for political gain.”

The Rev. Glenn Tombaugh, pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Russell, Kan., where the senator retains membership, believes that Dole hesitates to talk about faith because it’s not the “undercurrent that influences all” as it is for his wife Elizabeth, an outspoken evangelical Christian.

“His form of religion is not one that speaks to me so much,” says Tombaugh, who describes Dole as “very typical of the older-than-boomer generation. (Religion) is one factor of everything else that’s going on in society and you leave it in its place.”

In contrast, Bill Clinton knows the language of faith and knows how to use it, whether he’s talking to the nation in the aftermath of the Oklahoma bombing or eulogizing Ron Brown. “The Southern Baptists have a tradition of … giving your testimony,” says Lippy. “It’s a force of habit to make biblical allusions.”

Some observers suggest that the president’s use of religious rhetoric can be politically calculated, and wonder whether he even knows when he is quoting the Bible to score points with believers.

“When people say somebody is manipulative, they usually mean somebody throws the switch on or off at will,” says Penn State University professor of philosophy Carl Vaught, the son of the president’s late pastor in Little Rock, Ark. “He’s much more complicated than that. Sometimes he doesn’t know where the switch is.”


But even those who think that Clinton is prone to manipulation tend to attribute his comfort with God-talk to the central role religion plays in his life. Wogaman says, “He is a person of integrity and seriousness about faith. One night I saw him live in Bosnia and there he was in his pew the next morning.”

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Clinton’s churchgoing started as a child. Years later, while Hillary Clinton attended a local Methodist church with their daughter Chelsea, Clinton worshiped with Arkansas’ largest congregation, Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, a Southern Baptist church where he is still a member. He sang in the choir and developed a close relationship with the pastor, the Rev. Worley Oscar Vaught, a biblical scholar and father figure who counseled him on such issues as capital punishment and abortion.

Dole also has attended church since he was a boy, though his record of attendance has been uneven. During the years Dole attended Foundry United Methodist in Washington, Bauman says the senator often missed church “because he was on Sunday morning talk shows.” And Dole hasn’t attended Trinity in Kansas “in a couple of years at least,” Tombaugh notes. Parishioners were surprised, he says, during the senator’s last campaign trip when he left Russell on Sunday morning instead of coming to church.

Still, the Rev. Craig Barnes, senior minister of National Presbyterian Church, says Bob and Elizabeth Dole “are here most Sundays (and) they bring their Bibles with them when they come.”

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Both Clinton and Dole have stressed the connection between biblically based values and political action. But Clinton’s translation of religious concerns into personal and public policy decisions has been problematic for many conservative Christians.

The conservative ruling faction of the Southern Baptist Convention rebuked the president for his recent veto of the partial-birth abortion ban; they differ on such issues as gay rights. The Catholic bishops have also criticized Clinton’s veto.


Even among progressive Christians there is dissension, showing that the connection between spiritual values and political positions is in the eye of the beholder. Children’s Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman, an evangelical Christian, is among those who object strenuously to Clinton’s support of the welfare reform bill, which she sees as a betrayal of the biblical mandate to care for the poor.

Many Dole supporters, including the Christian Coalition, like his tough-love approach to problems of poverty, his support of a constitutional amendment on school prayer, and his rejection of partial-birth abortion.

The Clintons and Doles regularly give nearly 10 percent of their incomes to charity, following the biblical mandate to tithe. That compares with 1.8 percent for the average American household.

The most recent available tax information released by the White House says that the president and his wife gave about $30,000 of their $316,000 income to charity in 1995.

The Clintons did not release a breakdown, announcing only that two-thirds of the contributions went to the three churches the Clintons attend and the rest was divided among 19 charities. They declined to publicize those charities; White House press officer Mary Ellen Glynn said they didn’t want them to receive “undue publicity.”

The Doles contributed $57,603 of their 1995 income of $583,000 to 22 charities. The bulk of the money _ $51,178 _ went to the American Red Cross, from which Elizabeth Dole is on leave as president.


Since 1991, Dole has been required under Senate rules to give all his speaking fees to charity. Most of that money went to his own Dole Foundation for the Employment of People With Disabilities; to Sarah’s Circle, a Washington center for the elderly poor; and, before he stopped attending, the Foundry Methodist Church.

Dole’s Foundation for the Employment of People With Disabilities, founded in 1983, is highly respected in the philanthropic world. The group, which has modest administrative expenses, has given out more than $7 million in grants to find good jobs for people with disabilities.

The Dole Foundation is controversial, however, because of the source of its money. It is supported in large measure with six- and seven-figure donations from longtime supporters of Dole’s political career, including the Gallo wine family, Dwayne Andreas of Archer Daniels Midland and tobacco companies.

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In charity as well as in religion, interested observers see a disparity between private beliefs and public actions. Heads of charities contend, for example, that the candidates’ model private giving is at odds with their public actions. Specifically, they fear that the welfare bill, passed by Dole and his Congress and signed by Clinton, will leave charities with a responsibility for the poor they can’t possibly meet.

The Rev. Fred Kammer, head of Catholic Charities USA, the nation’s third most successful fund-raising charity after the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross, believes that both Dole and Clinton have deserted the nation’s poorest families. He acknowledges that their giving is “an important part of their personal moral lives.”

What’s missing from the campaign, Kammer said, is the idea that it is the duty of the larger community to share its resources with the poor. “The pope said it well,” Kammer said. “`One should not give in charity what is due in justice.”’


MJP END CASEY/LIEBLICH

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