Evangelicals say one Clinton is enough

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Posted: 12/30/07

WASHINGTON - Liza Kittle voted twice for Bill Clinton in the 1990s, but now the stay-at-home mom from Augusta, Ga., has no interest in another Clinton White House.

"Hillary Clinton just represents that '70s radical feminism that doesn't speak to evangelical women," said Kittle, 49, who began to lean Republican after a return to her Christian faith.

Women like Kittle, a self-described former feminist, are a problem for Clinton's presidential campaign. Evangelicals - especially women - find much to dislike, including her support of abortion rights, her 'takes-a-village' approach to child rearing, her liberal politics, and raw political calculation in sticking by her husband. Clinton may be the one candidate who could unify dispirited evangelical voters - against her.

All of which prompts the question: Where does the evangelical anti-Hillary hostility come from? Paul Kengor, author of "God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life," has a few ideas:

1. Her failed health care reform, which many conservatives saw as a massive big-government power grab.

2.The 1994 National Prayer Breakfast, at which Mother Teresa condemned abortion to loud applause while the Clintons sat on their hands.

3. Her 1995 imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt, suggested by spiritual adviser Jean Houston and chronicled by journalist Bob Woodward.

4. Her 1998 charge that a "vast right-wing conspiracy" was trying to sink her husband's presidency.

Clinton's campaign says she is simply misunderstood. "As Hillary Clinton often says herself, she is probably the least well-known, well-known person in America," said Burns Strider, head of faith-based operations for her campaign. "That is why we are reaching out to people of faith to join her campaign, including evangelical voters, so they are informed about her positions on the issues."

In a bid to recast her image among skeptical fellow Christians, she mused about "prayer warriors" in a forum hosted by Sojourners magazine and talked about "works without faith" at Rick Warren's California megachurch.

The Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, Clintons' United Methodist pastor during the White House years, said the woman he knows does not match the public caricature.

"A number of times, I saw her interacting with people where there was no political gain to be had and she was sensitive and caring," he said.

Some wonder if conservative Christians would be uneasy with a female commander-in-chief. The Southern Baptist Convention, after all, has declared that a wife should "submit herself graciously" to her husband, and many early evangelical warriors cut their political teeth in the fight against the Equal Rights Amendment.

But Texas author and professor Dorothy Patterson said there's a difference between voting for a woman and voting for this woman. Many evangelicals, she said, would feel perfectly comfortable with, say, Margaret Thatcher in the White House.

"I just do not think she espouses the values important to me," said Patterson, whose husband, Paige Patterson, is president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. "I do not think she has the character I would want to see in a woman."

Patterson and others, including Tamara Scott, an independent political consultant in Ankeny, Iowa, said Clinton's mantra - "It takes a village to raise a child" - shows "she's very anti-family."

"For most Christian parents, we understand parents are the God-given authority, and we're not willing to hand our children over to the village to be raised," Scott said. "It's, in fact, the village I'm protecting my children from."

Evangelicals are deeply skeptical of her reasons for remaining married to the former president.

"I appreciate the fact she's stuck by her man," said Sidonie Graves, member of the Republican Central Committee of Buchanan County, Iowa. "But I think she also knew that if she didn't stick with him, there was no hope for her political future."

Adds Kitty Rehberg, president of Iowa Eagle Forum: "We know where she wanted to go in her life and what power she wanted to have. I'm very skeptical on whether this is a true marriage."

"People vote who they trust," said Janice Shaw Crouse, director of the Beverly LaHaye Institute of the Washington-based Concerned Women for America. "I think the biggest factor Hillary will have to overcome is that trust factor, because so many people are suspicious of her motives."