I'm waiting for Hillary to disclose her tax returns.More important - I'm waiting for her to disclose all of the sermons of all of her pastors over the past 7+ years.
What is she hiding? It seems she's hiding plenty.
The Atlantic starts us off on the answer with this eerie essay about Hillary's strange and bizarre church fellowship.
But what else is Hillary hiding?Hillary's Minister Problem
Since Hillary Clinton has launched a frontal attack on her opponent's church and pastor, it's worth noting that she has some odd religious ties of her own. When I was profiling her two years ago, I learned about her involvement with a secretive Christian organization called The Fellowship that has operated in the Washington shadows since the 1930s. I found the story of Clinton and The Fellowship so bizarre that I made it the lede to my piece. In light of recent events, it's worth revisiting.
If you've never heard of The Fellowship (also known as The Family), it will sound like some shadowy organization in a John Grisham novel. (Indeed, as a Google search will demonstrate, critics consider it a cult.) The group was formed in the 1930s to minister to political and business leaders throughout the world, modeling itself as a kind of Christian Trilateral Commission. Several members of Congress are affiliated with the group, mostly Republicans, but some Democrats, too. To the extent The Fellowship is known beyond its members it is probably for founding the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.
Like Jeremiah Wright's Trinity Baptist Church, The Fellowship is run by its own mysterious and controversial figure, Douglas Coe, although temperamentally Coe is Wright's opposite. He eschews the spotlight and has never made a controversial public utterance that I'm aware of -- mainly because he rarely speaks publicly at all. (You won't find him on YouTube.) But like Wright, Coe has ministered to a Democratic frontrunner. He personally leads a private Senate prayer group that Clinton has been a part of.
In my piece, I chose to focus on the Senate prayer group, but others have written extensively about the strangeness and secrecy of The Fellowship. As this Los Angeles Times story and this exquisitely reported Harper's piece make clear, there is something deeply strange about the group. They certainly do not like press coverage, so in that regard Clinton's attraction might make sense. Reporters hoping to look into the group might want to think again. A few years ago, The Fellowship’s archives, which are held at Wheaton College, the evangelical school in Illinos, were reclassified as “restricted” and placed under lock and key.
Guardian writer Elana Shor reports, "The view from Clinton's former church:"
...Dean Snyder, a senior minister at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, has issued a statement warning white Americans that judging Wright "on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice" to the Chicago pastor, to Obama, and to the black church tradition in the US. The Clintons regularly attended Foundry services during their years in the White House...
Snyder said Obama's pastor "has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear".
The Foundry pastor, who is white, followed up in sermons on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, decrying racism and asking his congregation, "Who doesn't want to say God damn to this part of our national life together in which we just keep crucifying each other over and over again?"
Snyder also chastised white Americans for succumbing to fear in their reaction to Wright rather than listening to his message - which Snyder likened to resurrection.
"When the Jeremiah Wright sound bites appeared this week, I wish white Americans could have said, 'Tell us more, Dr Wright ... We may end up disagreeing with you, but we are going to take some time to try to understand what you have to say,'" Snyder said.
"What a wonderful thing that would have been for white America to do. But instead we became afraid."
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