c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Susan Grandis Goldstein is a producer with Religion and Ethics Newsweekly,the PBS television program.)

UNDATED _ The Senate is making its inexorable way to a final vote on whether to acquit or remove President Clinton from office under the two articles of impeachment approved last year by the House.

While it seems Clinton will be acquitted in the secular Senate trial, how would he have fared _ especially for the sexual aspects of the scandal _ under religious law at various times in history?

At least as well, according to some religious historians, as he’s likely to come out in the Senate.

For example, Clinton may have had a point in his famous finger-wagging denial that he had”sexual relations with that woman ….” According to Rabbi Irwin Kula of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York, what happened between Clinton and Monica Lewinsky was technically not adultery under biblical rules.”Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky’s relationship first of all would have had to be sexual intercourse and Monica would have had to have been married,”Kula said.”Second, two witnesses would have had to have seen them engaged in sexual intercourse and (a witness) somebody like Betty Currie would have needed to say to him _ and somebody would have needed to witness that _ that, `As you know, President Clinton, you just can’t do that. Do you know what the penalty of that is?” The penalty was being stoned to death _ if the charge could be proven.

At the same time, Kula said, even if it had been adultery, rulers got away with that.”Great leaders will inevitably have great flaws,”Kula said of the biblical view.”So the greatest leader of them all in the biblical period has some of the the most pronounced, personal moral flaws,”he said referring to King David.

According to Abdul Assiz Sachadina of the University of Virginia’s Religious Studies department and an expert on Islamic law, proving adultery was nearly impossible under Islamic law because to get a Muslim conviction the act had to be observed by four witnesses.”There wasn’t much catching,”Sachadina said.

Sachadina also said there probably wouldn’t have been any perjury charge brought against Clinton under Islamic law because”if you put your hand on the Koran, no one would doubt it.” Kula said that up until the 1400s A.D., there was no such thing as even taking an oath to say the truth.”The assumption was that you told the truth, and an oath would actually be taking God’s name in vain.” During the Middle Ages, under Canon Law, perjury was a serious religious crime because it meant you had violated an oath to God, according to church historian Martin E. Marty.”You were in a culture where you almost had a sense that God could strike you dead for breaking an oath.” Marty also said that adultery was difficult to prove in the Medieval era because there had to be confessions or”very convincing”circumstantial proof. The punishment, he said, was public penance _ unless you were a leader. Leaders were dealt with privately since it was felt that public humiliation of leaders would destabilize society.

Even the religious laws of the Puritans would have treated Clinton differently than his contemporary judges, Marty said.

He said that Puritans were expected to lead moral lives and individual sins were a disgrace to the entire community. But even the Puritans were not so pure and had their fair share of drunkenness, thieving, and whoring.

People guilty of making unwelcome sexual advances could be whipped or fined and public shaming was common with the sins of the fallen read out in a long public statement called a Jeremiad.

Adulterers _ men and women _ could be required to put on a white garment and stand up in church, humiliated for all to see, Marty said. But he said the more common response to misbehavior was to require repentance and forgiveness.”The president would have had to say `I’m sorry,’ and would have had to convince people that he was sorry, and the church and state would ask for restitution. And when that person would say `I humbly pledge to get back to another way of life,’ there wasn’t much more they could do about it,”Marty said.

In the Christian tradition, he added,”there was a basic pattern of confession, forgiveness, repentance, and restitution.” But Marty also said that _ perhaps ironically _ during Puritan times Clinton would have suffered more for being a Baptist than an adulterer.”Rather than a letter A for adultery, they would put a big B on President Clinton for Baptist and run him out of New England.”They would not have been as surprised or nettled by adultery as they would have been by his being a Baptist.”

DEA END GOLDSTEIN