Christian Church(Disciples of Christ)
Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ)
Contact: news@cm.disciples.org
WASHINGTON, D.C. (DNS) -- The Rev. Richard L. Hamm, general minister and president, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and more than a dozen of North America's top Christian leaders prayed for President Bill Clinton in the White House Oval Office Nov. 18. Bishop Nathaniel Linsey of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church led the prayer as all members of the group "laid hands" on the nation's chief executive.
Hamm and his colleagues from the National Council of Churches General Board were invited to Washington to share with Clinton their views on the current national budget deliberations. They personally delivered a NCC declaration on the nation's budget priorities, adopted by the board Nov. 15.
After a 45-minute meeting with the president came what Hamm describes as "one of the most remarkable moments of my life. We all stood in front of the president's desk, and we laid hands on the president." Bishop Linsey prayed that God would "make the president strong for the task" as he seeks to work with Congress in budget negotiations to protect vulnerable children, families and the elderly.
"The laying on of hands is a way of empowering and encouraging moral leadership," Hamm said. "We wanted to bolster his moral courage in the midst of an ideological struggle in which the needs of the most vulnerable in our society could be forgotten or lost."
The NCC declaration asserts that Americans share a "moral vision that...has led us to craft a society committed to providing for and protecting the poor, the vulnerable, the children, the elderly, the strangers in our midst." It maintains that the U.S. government is both "guardian and agent" of that vision, and that budget proposals that threaten the needy imperil the vision. "Appallingly, in the name of balancing the budget, the moral vision is discarded," the document declares.
Prior to the meeting, the delegation listened as Clinton's national radio address mirrored many of the concerns of the NCC representatives. Any budget that cuts funding for poor or disabled children, school lunches and education, health care for the poor and elderly, is "dead on arrival when it comes to the White House," the president declared.
The laying-on-of-hands prayer underscored that the group's mission was to offer moral and spiritual support, not partisan backing. "There are few things as powerful as touch," Hamm observed. "The president was, I think, visibly moved. I think everyone in the room was deeply affected." As the meeting concluded, Clinton said, "This will be a difficult day. This is a fine way to begin it."
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