Hillary, the Methodist

This profile of Senator Hillary Clinton may be a puff job by the New York Times. But I was intrigued by it nonetheless. And I find one of its central assertions, that Mrs. Clinton's views that abortion is a tragic option that should be exercised rarely, her concerns about film violence and sexual explicitness, and that morality matters don't stem from a desire to shift to the center, but genuinely-held beliefs, plausible.

Like Mrs. Clinton, I spent formative years of my youth in the Methodist Church. With missionary zeal, Methodists have historically not only striven for evangelization of the world and the internal spiritual transformation of believers, but to put that faith in action through social ministries. That spirit of do-goodism, a description I use with appreciation, is something that the young Hillary Rodham could have imbibed as much as the Goldwater Republicanism to which she once adhered.

None of this is to say that I see Senator Clinton's politics as being Christian any more than I see President Bush's in this way. But the probable spiritual roots of her views on a range of subjects are as likely to be imbued with Christian sensibilities as those of the President. God isn't a Republican or a Democrat. God is God and it's not right to trivialize Him by putting him in partisan pigeonholes.