On the 7th Day, No Rest in Rehashing President’s Situation

President Clinton’s actions in and near the Oval Office have been the subject of legal, political, cultural and semantic scrutiny in recent days. Sunday they were the recurrent theme of religious examination.

On the Christian day of worship, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s damning report about the president’s actions and the president’s own confessionary words were the main topics from many pulpits. To gloss them, pastors and their congregations resorted to a multitude of parables and Scriptural passages.

Some preachers preferred to avoid the topic that has saturated the country. In Chicago, a Roman Catholic priest drew cheers when he said in his sermon that he looked not to politicians but to his Bible for moral guidance.

Words of brimstone were heard in some spots in the land. “The president’s moral credibility has been destroyed. He has broken trusts with the American people and has been caught in a series of immoral acts that have compromised his presidency,” said Dr. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

At other places of worship, though, the scandal mostly prompted words of forgiveness and self-examination. Here are reports from four congregations around the country:

WASHINGTON, D.C. / Relief, Regret Greet Clinton No-Show

The 11 a.m. service at Foundry United Methodist Church is always crowded, and the congregation often includes First Parishioner William Jefferson Clinton. But Sunday, to both the relief and regret of the church’s pastor, the president decided at the last minute not to attend Foundry’s morning service.

Despite his physical absence, Clinton was deeply present. That would be true almost anywhere in Washington, but it is even more true at the massive gray stone church, which First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has been attending along with the couple’s daughter, Chelsea, almost from their arrival in Washington. More recently, Clinton, who is a Southern Baptist, has regularly joined them there.

Clinton has developed a close relationship with the church’s senior minister, J. Philip Wogaman, a former professor of Christian ethics. Wogaman was at Friday’s prayer breakfast at the White House, where Clinton made his most heartfelt public apology to date.

Foundry is an old church by Washington standards, tracing its beginnings to 1814, and it has long drawn a mix of politicians, bureaucrats and neighborhood residents. More than a dozen presidents, including James Madison, Rutherford B. Hayes and John Quincy Adams, worshiped regularly at Foundry, and Abraham Lincoln occasionally attended services.

As the 11 a.m. service drew near, parishioners craned their necks to see if the first family had taken their places in the front pew. There was the sense that, while people had come to hear their pastor’s thoughts in the midst of this moral crisis, they also had come to remind the president he has a place in the Christian community.

“If the president has any hope of weathering this storm, he needs to be visible, and this is one of the most acceptable places for him to be visible,” said one man, who described himself as a longtime member of the congregation.

The sermon topic, scheduled long before the debacle with Clinton and Monica S. Lewinsky burst into public view, was “A Call to Christian Maturity.” Yet Wogaman used the occasion to exhort the congregation to find a way to understand and grow from the president’s trauma.

In Wogaman’s view, America faces two fundamental choices in responding to the crisis: one spiritual, the other judgmental. He said the spiritual choice came into focus for him at Friday’s prayer breakfast.

“The president spoke words of deep repentance and contrition, and I feel I know the man well enough to know it came from the heart . . . because there were no excuses and he committed himself to the hard work of repentance, knowing . . . that it is sometimes the work of a lifetime,” Wogaman said.

The second choice presented itself clearly with the release later that day of Starr’s report on the Lewinsky affair.

“As it came out in lurid detail . . . enveloped in a climate of judgment and questions of punishment, I thought, which of these defines the soul of America? The way of repentance and forgiveness, or the way of judgment and punishment?” Wogaman asked.

ORANGE COUNTY / Even Worst Sinner Gets a Chance

At Holy Family Cathedral, in a largely middle-class Orange County community, Father Arthur Holquin spoke about finding grace in forgiveness and compassion.

Without directly mentioning Clinton and the furor surrounding the release of Starr’s investigative report, Holquin urged about 800 parishioners attending a midmorning mass to rise above the fray.

Arrogance, jealousy and temptation, he said, are as old as time, and have caused pain and hardship for many human beings. But rather than seeking retribution, Christ forgave, Holquin reminded.

“In the messiness and complexity of human existence, it is easy to be the hard judge of others,” he told the worshipers. “[But] as the days and weeks unfold, let us pray for wisdom . . . prudence and appropriate reflection as we speak on the events before us.”

Despite the “media frenzy that has reached near pathological status,” Holquin said, parishioners should reflect in their own hearts and minds about the president’s actions, remembering that even the worst among all sinners must be given a chance at forgiveness.

“This past week has been a time for us as a nation to struggle with the thoughts and actions of human failings. . . . It is good that we, as a people, step back and take God’s words to gain perspective and turn that perspective into wisdom and insight.”

Gary Murray, whose 4-year-old son was fidgeting nearby, said he found the sermon inspirational.

“People are so quick to condemn,” he said. “I’m willing to give [Clinton] a second chance. If he’s truly going to repent and try to make up for what he did, then I’m all for him.”

Others, like Gabriel Trejo, said it was Clinton’s family members who would have to find it in their hearts to forgive.

“What he did I don’t feel affects his decision-making for the country,” he said. “He made a poor moral decision for himself and his family. This should be between himself, his family and his God.”

Still, some parishioners, such as R. Burke of Orange, said it was difficult to know if the president is truly repentant.

“It is all very hard to stomach,” she said. “I think he’s really arrogant, and it would be nice to know if he was really sorry this time.”

More than 3,100 families are registered as members of the Holy Family parish, which was founded in Orange 76 years ago.

MIAMI / An ‘Utterly Appropriate’ Sermon

The congregants at South Miami’s Riviera Presbyterian Church are accustomed to hearing their plain-spoken minister, the Rev. Laurie Ann Kraus, deal frankly with the nitty-gritty of secular reality.

Thus, after a prayer of confession, two verses of “Amazing Grace” and a Gospel reading from Luke on the parable of the lost lamb, no one was surprised when Kraus began her sermon, “Now that the salacious details of the Starr report are blanketing virtually every form of public discourse . . .”

But there was a surprise here. In stressing Luke’s redemptive message, Kraus reminded her parishioners that the lesson of the lost lamb is not to be found in focusing on the straying sinner, but rather with the majority “left behind in the wilderness to fend for themselves.”

“Within the reign of God, no perspective is a given, no side the correct one, no assumption about anyone or anything unchallenged,” she said. “This time, you may be ‘the one’ who is lost, the settled soul whom the spirit seeks to shake up and move.”

As the organist pounded out the postlude “Song of Triumph,” morning sunlight streamed in through the sanctuary’s stained glass windows, and the 125 worshipers filed into Fellowship Hall, where most seemed more intent on lining up for a “Rally Day” picnic of hot dogs, hamburgers and baked beans than in discussing the politics of forgiveness.

“Most people say they know more than they needed to know [about the Starr report],” commented Sunday school teacher Henry Barrow, a radio broadcaster. “I’ve heard more talk of the Dolphins-Bills game than about Clinton.”

Still, Kraus said, using the president’s sins as the rationale for a Bible lesson was “utterly appropriate.”

“Hardly anyone here thinks Clinton should leave office,” Kraus said. “But my intention was not to tell people what to think. Rather, I wanted to raise our sense of personal accountability, to note that we are often likely to demonize or point fingers at other people.

“Church is not a place to get away from it but to make sense of it.”

LOS ANGELES / Forgoing Final Judgment

Just as Jonah struggled with his cynicism toward repentant sinners of the threatened biblical city of Nineveh, Americans today are wrestling with similar conflicts as they decide whether this country’s beleaguered president should be spared their wrath.

The Rev. Frank Alton, pastor of the grand, cavernous Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire Boulevard, drew that parallel in a morning sermon when he turned to the Old Testament story of Jonah to help his congregation of about 200 people sort through their feelings about Clinton’s profession of repentance for his affair with Lewinsky.

Alton didn’t quite demand suspension of cynicism toward Clinton, lest the country join Jonah in the belly of a whale. But many in his congregation came away ready to put their judgments on hold and let God make the final determination.

“Do I think he is really repentant?” asked Stacy Tomson-Rispin, a math and science tutor. “Yes. But do I know for sure? No.” “I’m not the one with the ultimate power to determine that,” she said, adding that impeachment “would be very detrimental to the country.”

Others said the story of Jonah made them think about their own cynicism toward Clinton and to realize that they do not have divine insight to determine whether he is genuinely repentant.

In the Bible story, when God ordered Jonah to Nineveh to warn the citizens that they risked destruction if they didn’t change, Jonah suspected they would feign repentance and God would grant them undeserved forgiveness. Rather than be a party to such a charade, he disobeyed God and fled to sea, only to get thrown overboard by his mates when a terrible storm threatened to sink their ship.

He was swallowed by a whale, who eventually spit him on to dry land after God answered Jonah’s prayer and forgave him for disobeying his orders. Thus chastened, Jonah carried out God’s orders, albeit reluctantly. As expected, the sinners of Nineveh quickly changed their ways and asked forgiveness, which, to Jonah’s consternation, God granted.

Just as the Ninevites, Clinton is now asking for forgiveness.

“President Clinton has grown more and more remorseful as the threat to his presidency has grown larger and larger,” Alton said. “Did he get to that point because of pressure? Because he just got caught? We’ll never know.”

But Alton noted that Clinton is like most people in that, whenever they repent, they do so because it is in their best interests.

Alton said in an interview that he was not saying people should automatically suspend their skepticism toward Clinton’s profession of remorse. “I just hope they will wrestle with it.”

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Times wires services contributed to this story.

This story was reported and written by Times staff writers Alissa J. Rubin in Washington, Mike Clary in Miami, Steve Berry in Los Angeles and Lorenza Munoz in Orange.