c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ President Clinton, reaching to the heart of his Christian faith, said Friday he “sinned” in his sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He said he has repented and is seeking forgiveness.

Clinton made his most dramatic and detailed _ and his most theological _ comments to date on the scandal that has scarred and threatened to ruin his presidency. He summoned the core concepts of his Southern Baptist heritage to tell an interfaith and interracial audience of male and female clerics, religious leaders and government officials _ along with a live national television audience _ that he “must have the help of God to be the person that I want to be.”

His comments at an annual White House prayer breakfast continued a series of apologies and explanations that he has made in recent days.

Even as Clinton addressed the hushed and somber audience, Congress was arranging the release of a 445-page report by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr laying out the results of his four-year probe of the president’s financial and sexual conduct. The report included explicit material detailing Clinton’s sexual relationship with Lewinsky.

But among those attending the prayer breakfast Clinton’s words _ many of them drawn from the brief 19 verses of Psalm 51, a prayer of David for forgiveness after his affair with Bathsheba _ had the ring of the authentic penitent brought to his knees in the classic Christian drama of a sinner seeking forgiveness.

“My impression is of a man who is really seeking forgiveness,” said Dick McMillen, president of the International Union of Gospel Missions, the network of rescue missions known for rehabilitating Skid Row alcoholics and drug abusers.

“We saw the brokenness,” McMillen said of Clinton, referring to the Christian concept of breaking the sense of prideful arrogance that is necessary for repentance to set in.

Indeed, Clinton himself made the point.

“I believe that to be forgiven, more than sorrow is required _ at least two more things,” he said to muttered “amens” among the audience.

“First, genuine repentance. … I have repented. Second, what my Bible calls a broken spirit. An understanding that I must have God’s help to be the person I want to be. A willingness to give the very forgiveness I seek. A renunciation of the pride and the anger which cloud judgment, lead people to excuse and compare and to blame and complain.”

“Public confession is always sad,” the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said after the session. “It is not easy to watch a man with that much power humble himself in that way.”

But Campbell said the president’s public confession should now end the words of apology.

“He has made his religious statement,” she said. “Now we must ask what we do to allow a repentant sinner to lead the nation. There may have to be some kind of public acknowledgment _ perhaps congressional censure _ that says what he did was terribly wrong.”

The Rev. Robert Franklin, president of the International Theological Center in Atlanta, a major seminary for historically black denominations, said he has the sense the president “still needs to do more.”

Franklin, who attended the morning prayer meeting and then flew to Atlanta to address a convention of the Religion Newswriters’ Association, said Clinton must “move from the rhetoric of confession and renewal to the rituals of confession and renewal.”

In particular, Franklin recommended Clinton undertake a regime of retreats in which he would fast, pray, read and finally write a “spiritual autobiography.”

Atif Harden, executive director of the American Muslim Council, said of Clinton’s plea for forgiveness that, from the perspective of Islam, as in Christianity, “Ultimately, forgiveness will be God’s decision.

“As a human we should forgive him,” Harden said. “He has committed an indefensible act, but not an unforgivable one. Based on discussions with those knowledgeable in Islam, I personally am ready to do so.”

At the same time, participants seemed to be moved and struck by the uniqueness of the moment.

Franklin said there was a sense of “controlled panic and quiet foreboding” at the beginning of the session.

The Rev. James Dunn, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, described a “holy hush” at the end of Clinton’s remarks.

“It was really a dramatic, mind-boggling experience,” Dunn said. “It was like being present for the unveiling of the Sistine Chapel.”

Several of those present suggested Clinton’s dramatic confession of sin and his determination to repent could be a model for all Americans.

“The personal difficulties experienced by the president and his family are not unique,” said United Methodist Bishop Felton May of the Baltimore-Washington Conference. He said Clinton’s enactment of the Christian dynamic of confession and repentance could be “a role model for all who struggle to find peace and wholeness in their lives.”

MJP END RNS