Church and the Presidents

Today I was thinking about the church going habits of American Presidents after the press reported Obama is attending the gym instead of church on Sunday morning. I thought this article was particularly interesting. It was discussing, in part, why Bush didn't go to church, and yet made a lot of hay about how he was more "Jesusy" than his political competition. She makes note, accurately I think, that Democratic presidents were more committed to Christian worship while president than their Republican counterparts.

In particular, her discussion about worshipping with the Clinton's at Foundry Methodist was interesting, well-writen, and at times moving:

And before Clinton haters work themselves into a frothing state of outrage, they should know this: I started attending Foundry after the Lewinsky scandal, when I was incredibly disappointed in Clinton and furious with him for putting his staff and other Democratic politicians in the position of lying for him. I joined the church despite, not because of, the fact that the Clintons went there as well.

Yet the experience of attending church with the president led me to eventually see him not as a corrupt or immoral leader, but as a fellow child of God, a sinner like the rest of us. On the Sunday that I joined the church, I was seated in the pew just in front of Bill and Chelsea Clinton. I spent the service listening to the president sing too loudly and slightly off-key (just like my own dad) with his daughter elbowing him (just like me). I turned around at the sound of scribbling during the sermon to see him jotting notes in his Bible. And when it came time for communion, I was powerfully affected. All of us--president, senator, student, welfare mom--drank from the same cup, shared the same sacrament. "His blood, shed for you," was the sentiment offered to each of us. Shed for me, shed for the president, shed for any who would come forward. For the first time, I understood the humanizing (in every sense) and equalizing aspects of the act of communion.