[Oe List ...] Hillary Clinton and Tillich

[Nancy Lanphear]

Dear Ones,

Isn't it amazing how synchronistic life is?  I discover daily that our 
circles of life connect with others in most wondrous ways!

Last week Fred received an email from Isaac Kariyuki from Nairobi.  
Isaac was one of the young men in Kawangware that was so full of energy 
and fun.  He is now an evangelist living in the south east with his 
wife and 3 children.

A few years ago I received a letter from another young man who then 
lived in Western Kenya and was a teacher.  He was the son of Joram who 
at one time was the manager of the Urban Farm Program in Kawangware.  
Joram had died at a relatively young age but his son had found my name 
in his father's journal and had written to let me know about his father 
and to send greetings to us.  This young man must have been a child 
when we lived in Kawangware but I do not remember him.   We 
corresponded a couple of time but them I lost track of him.

Take care and remember that you are loved.

Nancy




On Feb 7, 2007, at 12:32 PM, chagnon at comcast.net wrote:

> Lucille Chagnon here...
>      Several years ago I asked if anyone knew if Hillary Clinton had 
> attended an RS-I when she was a teen, something I had heard about as a 
> possibility from colleagues way back.  I don't know if it was in 
> response to that that David Reese sent a long e-mail about a meeting 
> of EI colleagues with Rev. Don Jones, Hillary's mentor, near Mary 
> Coggeshall's NJ home.
>     This week's Newsweek has an article, which I copied below, about 
> Hillary and her mentor, complete with mention of E. E. Cummings and 
> Tillich.
>     I had kept David's e-mail and I copied that below the Newsweek 
> article.
>
> --------------------
>
> Newsweek        February 12, 2007 issue, page 30    
> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16960621/site/newsweek/
>
> Hillary's Religious Roots
> At 13, she met a Methodist minister who became a lifelong friend.
>
> By Susannah Meadows
>
> If Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush have anything in common, it is a 
> deeply rooted wariness of outsiders. Both the president and the woman 
> who hopes to succeed him have always relied on a small, closed circle 
> of friends and advisers who have been with them for years. So it's not 
> surprising that there are so many familiar faces on Clinton's new 
> campaign team. Ad maker Mandy Grunwald, pollster Mark Penn, strategist 
> Ann Lewis and others are loyalists from Bill Clinton's White House.
>
> There is another person on Hillary's shortlist of confidants who goes 
> back farther than any of them, but whom you've probably never heard 
> of. The Rev. Don Jones, a Methodist minister who is now 75, was 
> perhaps Hillary's earliest spiritual and political mentor. She has 
> written of her "lifelong friendship" with him. It was Jones who first 
> awakened young Hillary to the civil rights movement and counseled her 
> on questions of faith. They continued to be in touch as Hillary became 
> a national figure. Years later, he helped her through the darkest 
> period in her life, the aftermath of her husband's affair with Monica 
> Lewinsky.
>
> Precocious and confident, 13-year-old Hillary was an active member of 
> her Methodist church in Park Ridge, Ill., when Jones arrived in 1961 
> to lead the youth group. Fresh from the seminary, he was anything but 
> stuffy in his red Chevy Impala convertible. He carried the Bible, but 
> also the collected poems of E. E. Cummings. Hillary, politically aware 
> even then, was a budding Republican who took after her staunchly 
> conservative father. In long discussions at the church, Jones 
> introduced Hillary to the left. The young minister was determined to 
> show his white, privileged parishioners the world beyond their 
> suburban town. He took them to the South Side of Chicago to hear 
> Martin Luther King Jr. speak. Jones introduced each of them to the 
> civil rights leader.
>
> But the conversation wasn't all politics. "Hillary would come up to 
> talk to me after I preached and make comments about the sermon, how 
> the hymns, prayers and Biblical passages were coordinated with the 
> message," Jones tells NEWSWEEK. Jones hewed closely to the 
> social-justice tradition of the Methodist Church, preaching that 
> helping those in need was a means of practicing their faith. "I think 
> she responded to my ministry in part for its intellectual content," 
> Jones says. "Her heart responded to the social responsibility 
> aspects."
>
> Not everyone appreciated the minister's lessons. Within two years, the 
> conservative members of the congregation asked him to leave. Jones 
> landed at Drew University in Madison, N.J., where he spent his career 
> teaching theology. They were in communication while Hillary was in 
> high school and later at Wellesley. During her time as First Lady, he 
> visited the White House nine times. After Bill Clinton admitted his 
> affair with Lewinsky, Jones gave Hillary a Paul Tillich sermon about 
> grace, and how it comes to you when you feel great pain. Jones says he 
> hoped Hillary would pass the words on to her husband. "It was my 
> secret agenda," he says. Sure enough, five days later, Jones received 
> a thank-you note from the president. Last year he saw the Clintons at 
> their home in Chappaqua, N.Y. The senator had called him to invite her 
> old friend to her mother's birthday party.
>
> Though she's been accused of adopting a religious patina for political 
> gain, her relationship with Jones shows that from the time she was 
> young, Hillary was thinking seriously about her faith. She clearly 
> talks more about religion these days, as many politicians do—but her 
> connection to Jones reveals that her Christianity has always been at 
> the center of her identity. "She's not using the language of prayer 
> and God for the first time," says Jones. "While there may be a 
> political dimension, it's authentic."
>
> Jones describes Hillary's beliefs as falling, like her politics, 
> somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Unlike the extreme left, she 
> understands the limitations of human beings, he says. And unlike the 
> extreme right, he argues, she believes in humanity's potential. She 
> does take seriously the doctrine of original sin. And after a lifetime 
> in politics, she's seen plenty of it.
>
> © 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
>
> ---------
>
> from David Reese  Nov. 2003
>
> Hi, each of you have been talking about Hillary and RS-1 probabilities 
> way
> back in the 60's.  The book is:  HILLARY CLINTON by Judith Warner, 
> released in
> January of '93.  It is a paperback by Signet.
>
> Reading it soon after the Clinton election, I got excited by the same 
> thing
> some of you are recalling.  Page 18 begins a description of her youth 
> minister,
> Don Jones, "currently a professor of religion at Drew University in New
> Jersey".   Jones is described as 'fresh out of Drew U. Theological 
> School'.
>
> He describes taking the lily white youth group into the inner city, 
> meeting
> with black and Hispanic groups.  At Drew, the piece says, that  Jones 
> studied
> under Paul Tillich.  That he exposed the kids to Picasso, e. e. 
> cummings and
> Stephen Crane.  Screened films like "Requiem For a Heavyweight and the 
> 400
> Blows".
>
> "I took a print of Picasso's Guernica, took it into the inner city, 
> set it on
> the back of a chair, and asked both groups, the city group and the 
> suburban
> group to look at the painting and not say anything, and then we talked 
> about it
> in terms of their experience."   And on.......'what strikes you?', 
> 'what
> grabs you?'
>
> The writer continues:   "Jones introduced Hillary in small doses to the
> difficult theological writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reinhold 
> Niebuhr and Paul
> Tillich".
>
> Now, all this convinced me that Don Jones had been to a PLC so I 
> called Drew
> U., got his number and talked with him for a while.  Since there was 
> to be an
> ICA meeting fairly soon in New Jersey and some of us were going to 
> stay at
> Mary Coggleshall's home, I got in touch with Ray Caruso and Mary and 
> they agreed
> it would be good to set up a meeting with Don Jones.
>
> Mary may have done the actual arranging.  Ray, Mary, Don Jones and I, 
> and
> maybe another person or so, had lunch with Don and later reported back 
> to the ICA
> meeting.
> (My notes of that time are buried somewhere in files packed away out 
> in the
> garage.)
>
> It was a fascinating and informing time.  He talked about telling Joe
> Matthews of his plans to get a PhD and Joe dismissing that plan with 
> something like,
> "Come and be with us, it will be better for you than any PhD".
>
> He was still in touch from time to time with Hillary.  By mail.  He 
> talked
> about Japanese TV crews looking him up, taking him to those places in 
> South
> Chicago where the youth groups had gone and pressing him for details.  
> Preparing
> to leave us after the lunch, he promised that whenever he met with 
> Hillary
> later in the years, he would recall to her the sources in the 
> Ecumenical Institute
> to which he had exposed the youth and her in their church group.
>
> David Walters, I never got the impression that Hillary had attended a 
> full
> fledged RS-l or that her family had been involved with RS-l.  Ray 
> Caruso was
> there and could have other opinions.   Mary Coggleshall, too, could 
> have more
> details of the meeting. All of us were excited to hear these details 
> of her youth
> experience but I don't recall anything ever coming of it.  Anyone could
> probably find the book among old books of that time.
>
> --
> Lucille T. Chagnon, M.Ed.
> Literacy Acceleration Consultants
> 408 River Road, Wilmington, DE 19809-2731
> 302-762-0282    fax -0285
> chagnon at comcast.net      www.teachtwo.net
>
>
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