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Nov. 6, 2009
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Nov. 5, 2009
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JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
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Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review July 10, 2007 / 24 Tamuz, 5767

Hillary on her faith

By Cal Thomas


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Some unknown author once said, "Everybody should believe in something; I believe I'll have another drink."


Democratic senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took a less cynical and more substantive approach to faith in a recent interview with The New York Times. The quality and depth of one's relationship with God should be personal and beyond the judgment of others, unless one is running for president and chooses to talk about it as part of a campaign plan to win the election.


Democrats have been encouraged and coached by liberal evangelical Christian Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine to talk about their faith in an attempt to capture a small slice of the religious vote that has mostly gone to conservative Republicans in the last several election cycles.


In a Times' front-page story about Sen. Clinton's Methodist faith, there are pictures of her in Sunday school as a young girl, pictures of two ministers who "influenced Hillary Rodham on faith and social responsibility," and two pictures of her praying.


One of the ministers from her youth, Rev. Donald Jones, says of his messages then, "I wouldn't have focused so much on personal salvation. I would have focused more on social responsibility." In theological circles this is known as "works salvation," the notion that one can do enough good deeds to earn God's approval and enter Heaven. While James, the Apostle, writes "faith without works is dead" (James 2:20), he means that works done as a result of saving faith for the purpose of leading others to that same faith — not for the sole objective of improving one's own circumstances on earth — find approval in God's sight, while works that are separated from a saving faith message are, as the prophet Isaiah says about such human righteousness, like "filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6).


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Even the Times suggests the destination of a strictly "social gospel": "Mrs. Clinton sometimes was a guest speaker at an adult Sunday school class, a class that some members complained normally resembled Rotary Club lectures because it often addressed nonreligious topics." To paraphrase James, if faith without works is dead, so also are works without faith.


Liberal faith, which is to say a faith that discounts the authority of Scripture in favor of a constantly evolving, poll-tested relevancy to modern concerns — such as the environment, what kind of SUV Jesus would drive, larger government programs and other "do-good" pursuits — ultimately morphs into societal and self-improvement efforts and jettisons the life-changing message of salvation, forgiveness of sins and a transformed life.


If the newspaper story is accurate, this is where Mrs. Clinton is on her faith: "In a brief quiz about her theological views, Mrs. Clinton said she believed in the resurrection of Jesus, though she described herself as less sure of the doctrine that being a Christian is the only way to salvation."


This is a politician speaking, not a person who believes in the central tenets of Christianity. The same book that tells of the Resurrection, also quotes Jesus as saying "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6). One might ask, which the reporter did not, that if there are other ways to God than through Jesus, why did He bother to come to earth, allow Himself to be crucified and suffer rejection? He might have stayed in Heaven and told people about a spiritual GPS system that would get them there another way.


About the accuracy of Scripture, Sen. Clinton serves up theological mush: "The whole Bible gives you a glimpse of God and God's desire for a personal relationship (good, so far), but we can't possibly understand every way God is communicating with us. I've always felt that people who try to shoehorn in their cultural and social understandings of the time into the Bible might be actually missing the larger point."


That is precisely the point of liberal Christianity, to which Sen. Clinton subscribes.


Sen. Clinton is entitled to whatever faith she wants to practice, but when she uses it as an election tactic, she should not be allowed to alter classic Christian theology.

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JWR contributor Cal Thomas is the author of, among others, The Wit and Wisdom of Cal Thomas Comment by clicking here.


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