Word: baptiste
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Unlike Ronald Reagan, who once said he did not attend church regularly because it was "wrong" to make worshippers go through metal detectors required for his security, Clinton has been a steady presence at Little Rock's Immanuel Baptist Church since 1980, singing in the choir every Sunday he was in town, wearing robe No. 192 and bringing his family Bible with him. Unlike Jimmy Carter, who made his born-again experience as a Baptist a public testament to his integrity, Clinton is deeply reticent about his faith, even showing mild disdain for those who would play up their faith...
...journey began in the living room of his grandparents' home in Hope, where he lived until he was four and where a Bible was always left open. When his mother moved to Hot Springs, she seldom attended church. But the young Clinton was often seen walking to Park Place Baptist Church alone, dressed up in his Sunday clothes and carrying his leatherbound Bible. "I can remember thinking, 'Isn't that neat that Bill is going. He must take it more seriously than we do.' My mother was having to drag us there," recalls Patty Howe Criner, a friend of Clinton...
...Yale Law School and up through his election as attorney general of Arkansas in 1976 at age 30, Clinton was, by his own description, an "uneven churchgoer for a long time." But his defeat in 1980 after his first term as Governor changed that. Critics say his joining Immanuel Baptist Church, whose services are televised throughout the state, was nothing but an attempt to build goodwill with Arkansas voters. But, says his longtime chief of staff in Arkansas, Betsey Wright, "people overlook what a traumatic occurrence that defeat was. Getting himself into a church family was very important in terms...
...expression, matching in some ways the tension in his personality between his populist leanings as an Elvis Presley-loving son of a small-town nurse and his intellectual elitism as a Rhodes scholar and full-time wonk. He developed an intense relationship with the Rev. W.O. Vaught of Immanuel Baptist, a biblical scholar known for his erudition, whose sermons were drawn directly from Scripture. Friends of both men say Clinton, who lost his father to a car accident before he was born, was drawn to him for his paternal and nonjudgmental counsel. Vaught, who died of bone cancer three years...
This faith has not protected him against attacks by his Baptist brethren. In fact, his minister friends have been startled by the degree of pious animus directed at him from some conservative pulpits since his election. The Rev. D. James Kennedy, pastor of the 8,000-member Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, whose religious broadcast is carried on 360 television stations nationwide, earlier this year cited a tabloid account of Clinton's alleged affair with former Arkansas cabaret singer Gennifer Flowers as an indication of the President's moral delinquency. "If his wife cannot rely upon...