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Project and Book Requests 1999: Wiley, Jill - Restoring Faith in Politics
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Project and Book Requests 1999: Wiley, Jill - Restoring Faith in Politics
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August 26, 1999
Jill Wiley
321 Boylston Street
Brockton, MA 02301
Dear Ms. Wiley:
I received your thoughtful request that Mrs. Clinton contribute to your book Restoring Faith in
Politics. Although this is a subject of great interest to her, unfortunately she must decline your
kind invitation. Her schedule this year does not permit her to take on additional obligations of
this sort, even for such a worthy project as this.
Best of luck with your book.
Sincerely,
Shirley Sagawa
Deputy Assistant to the President
Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady
LIST OF THOSE INVITED TO
CONTRIBUTE TO
"RESTORING FAITH IN POLITICS"
++++
VICE-PRESIDENT
AL GORE
FIRST LADY
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
AMBASSADOR
REVD. CHARLES SMITH AND
DR. DEBORAH PROTHROW SMITH
U.S. SENATOR
GEORGE MCGOVERN
U.S. SENATOR
BILL BRADLEY
JOAN ADAMS MONDALE
CONGRESSWOMAN
BARBARA LEE
IOWA SECRETARY OF STATE
CHESTER J. CULVER
REVD. MINERVA CARCANO
REVD. DR. JAMES A. NASH
THEOLOGIAN
ROBERT MCAFEE BROWN
AUTHOR
ANNE LAMOTT
UNION ORGANIZER
KIM BOBO
COMMENTATOR
BILL PRESS
& OTHERS WHO
MAY BE ADDED
-
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
August 26, 1999
Jill Wiley
321 Boylston Street
Brockton, MA 02301
Dear Ms. Wiley:
I received your thoughtful request that Mrs. Clinton contribute to your book Restoring Faith in
Politics. Although this is a subject of great interest to her, unfortunately she must decline your
kind invitation. Her schedule this year does not permit her to take on additional obligations of
this sort, even for such a worthy project as this.
Best of luck with your book.
Sincerely,
Shirley Sagawa
Deputy Assistant to the President
Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady
DATE:
JULY 14, 1999
TO:
SHIRLEY SAGAWA, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF
FROM: JILL WILEY
RE:
INVITATION TO THE FIRST LADY TO CONTRIBUTE
TO A BOOK ABOUT FAITH & POLITICS
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO I CONTACTED THE FIRST LADY'S
OFFICE ABOUT INVITING HER TO CONTRIBUTE WRITTEN
MATERIAL FOR A BOOK. I WAS DIRECTED TO SUBMIT SUCH
A REQUEST TO YOU. ENCLOSED I HAVE SUBMITTED A
LETTER OF REQUEST TO THE FIRST LADY ALONG WITH A
PROSPECTUS ABOUT THE PROJECT I AM CO-EDITING.
I GREATLY APPRECIATE ANY ASSISTANCE YOU MIGHT BE
ABLE TO PROVIDE REGARDING THIS REQUEST. AS I
INDICATE IN THE LETTER, I WOULD BE VERY HAPPY TO BE
IN CONTACT WITH YOURSELF OR SOMEONE ON THE STAFF
WHO WOULD BE IN A POSITION TO PROCESS THIS
INVITATION OR WOULD BE PLEASED TO PROVIDE ANY
FURTHER INFORMATION YOU MIGHT REQUIRE.
THANK YOU AND WITH KINDEST REGARDS.
YOURS,
fill Wiley
JILL WILEY
321 BOYLSTON STREET
BROCKTON, MA. 02301
PH. 508-427-0081
FAX 508-583-7156
E-MAIL:
JILL [email protected]
RESTORING FAITH IN POLITICS
321 Boylston Street
Brockton, MA 02301
phone 508-427-0081
fax 508-583-7156
e-mail: [email protected]
July 14, 1999
Hillary Rodham Clinton
First Lady
The White House
Washington, D. C. 20500
Dear Mrs. Clinton:
I would like to invite you to contribute to a book of essays entitled Restoring Faith in Politics which I am co-editing
with Revd. Dr. Warren W. Lee, professor at San Francisco Theological Seminary. Enclosed is a prospectus with
details about the project.
Our hope is to forge vital new links between faith and politics. By opening the political conversation to reflection on
issues of faith and ethics, we seek to encourage more clergy and churchpeople to participate actively in the political
process. This book forms one aspect of a vision that includes activities and projects that will enable local churches,
religious organizations and their members to reflect on how their faith and politics intersect. A major religious
publisher is among those considering the project and as the enclosed prospectus outlines, our goal is to translate the
message of the book into greater political activism within faith communities for many elections to come.
Your lifelong experience of faith in the Methodist tradition and leadership in the local church as well as your many
public statements which reflect a deep personal faith suggest you might share the sense that Dr. Lee and I have about
the great potential for a progressive faith-in-politics movement in America.
We hope you will accept our invitation to contribute to our book and will feel that the realization of our vision will
provide an important new faith context for Campaign 2000 and beyond. With your busy schedule, we recognize that
it is not easy having the time to write more articles and essays. We would be happy to include material you have
written previously and would properly highlight its source. We thought perhaps subject matter relating to global
issues would reflect your interests in this regard or perhaps reflections on how faith can motivate one's political
action. Above all, our aim is to help shift the political debate of coming campaigns beyond the process itself and
toward meaningful reflection on what it means to be one nation among many nations "under God."
I feel compelled to add a personal note here. Two years ago when I was attending the Methodist Oxford Institute I
cornered Phil Wogaman and told him that if you ever came to him to explore a call to ministry, he should tell you that
there was an American in the British Methodist Church who would affirm you in it wholeheartedly. I have returned to
the US now and still sense in you a strong vocation and know you would have a wonderful time studying theology
and would make a wonderful United Methodist minister!
It would be a great pleasure for me to work with a member of your staff in developing a response to this requset for
material for our book. With every blessing and good wish to you, your family and staff.
Yours faithfully,
fill Wiley
RESTORING FAITH IN POLITICS
The hope of things to come.
A project to bring new visions, new voices
& the oldest values to the 2000 Campaign
RESTORING FAITH IN POLITICS
Introduction
by JIII Wiley
Somewhere a line has to be drawn to say: that was then and this is now.
Something has to be created to separate the politics of expediency and exclusion--the politics of
the recent past---from a new national politics of participation and agenda-setting. A political system
obsessed with "process" and raising the money to fund it has only turned voters off. A public-access
politics that embodies inclusiveness, meaning and value has the potential of turning democracy back on
in America.
"RECLAIMING THE GROUND"
Perhaps this collection of essays can help draw that line. Its inspiration, a similar small book, is
largely regarded as having drawn a line in the dirt of British politics in 1993. The Labour Party leader at
the time, the late John Smith, was well-known for his deeply-held religious convictions as an elder in the
Church of Scotland. Smith presided over the launch of a book published by the Christian Socialist
Movement for which he had written the title essay "Reclaiming the Ground." In the spring of 1993 it had
only been a year since the Labour Party had gone down to a stunning and largely unexpected fifth
straight defeat at the hands of Margaret Thatcher's Tories. Reclaiming the Ground was seen as the
opportunity to re-state the founding moral and ethical bases in religious terms of Labour Party politics
and of modern Britain itself. In doing so, the book and a public lecture of the same title by Smith may
well have set the Labour Party on the course it needed to regain---by a huge landslide in 1997---the reins
of British government. Sadly, John Smith was not to witness this victory. He died at the age of 56 two
months after Reclaiming the Ground was published. But succeeding Smith as leader of the Labour
Party was the writer of the book's foreword, a prominent Christian Socialist himself and now the first
Labour Prime Minister in a generation, Tony Blair.
FAITH AND BLAIR
Today, Tony Blair, several Christian Socialists in the British Cabinet as well as dozens of CSM
members of Parliament make no disguise of their commitment to liberal religious values. Equally, CSM
has in its national membership of nearly 4,000 political activists a large portion of clergy including Church
of England bishops and prominent leaders among Catholics, Methodists, Baptists and other evangelicals.
A Methodist minister, David Haslam, was elected national chair in 1999, shortly after CSM's founder and
long-time president, also a Methodist minister Donald Soper died at the age of 95.
A CALL FOR ACTION WITH VALUES
The call for political action to be grounded in religious values lies at the heart of this American
collection of writings by politicans who are religious and religious people who are political.
In the "then" of American politics should lie the ruins of a long-held (nearly universal) misreading
of the separation of church and state as meaning the separation of government and God. As President
John F. Kennedy stated in the opening words of his Inaugural address" the 'rights of man' come not
from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God."
The "now" of politics should simply affirm what the writers of the Constitution intended in the first
provision of the Bill of Rights: that the state establish no religion that excluded or imperiled others. It is
on this point that both a so-called Religious Right and Left could surely agree. In the "now" of a new
American politics, while church and state remain separate, faith and politics must forge new links for the
good of us all.
Thus, the following writers offer to us not only how they see their faith informing their politics but
how their politics activates their faith. In doing so, their words may serve as much to restore faith in faith
as taken together they re-new our faith in politics and its capacity to change things---and us--for good.
We interrupt this process.
Campaign 2000 offers the opportunity to renew links between faith and Presidential politics in
America. But it will require stopping in our tracks and genuinely seeking new ways to do politics.
As more and more money has poured into political campaigns, the process has come to mean
less and less to ordinary citizens. Signs of the "meaning deficit" are low voter turn-out, virtually no public
debate on party platforms and an ever-growing political class of consultants, pollsters, pundits and
operatives.
Because faith communities are among the few institutions in our society that can match the
political system in national breadth, history and influence they have a crucial role to play in calling that
system into accountability to its citizens. Equally, faith communities can contribute an important
leadership role within the political system in order to renew and restore public confidence in it.
WHAT FAITH OFFERS POLITICS:
new language
Religious language provides the means for humans to communicate about their highest
aspirations and deepest needs in the context of values, symbols and intangibles like spirit, hope
and forgiveness. Much of political discourse is grounded in economics, law, and the political
process itself. which rarely gives voice to the most profound issues of our society.
longer view
The political class lives from campaign to campaign, where loyalties are absolute but
generally short-term and everything turns on the dime of an Election Day. Religious faith
operates in the timeline of centuries and in the already-but-not-yet of belief and hope.
Restoring the faith of the American people in this country's political system may not happen in
Campaign 2000 or Campaign 2004 or even the one after that. But the process has got to start
from somewhere and people of faith know that the time to believe in something is now.
wider conversation
As it is, most political conversation is carried on by the political class talking among themselves
with the rest of us listening in. But politics and democracy is about us all and each citizen and
each class of citizens has a part to play and something to say in the political conversation. Faith
communities may be more representative of the social groups in American society than elected
bodies. Therefore, conversations about political issues conducted within faith communities tap
into the broad spectrum of American society. Alongside lawyers and economists, the voices of
artists, children, retired people, homemakers, teachers, poor people and wealthy must be
heard in the process of setting the American agenda and creating any new national identity.
WHAT POLITICS OFFERS FAITH:
energy for change
Few things match the excitement and expediency of politics which could only serve to stir people
of faith into action and a deeper appreciation for the possiblities of the new.
engagement with God's now
While faith communities are born out of tradition, they are called to be part of God's activity
today. Politics is all about the now and political activity offers people of faith the opportunity to
translate their faith into action in very real ways on behalf of their neighbors.
common ground
The divisions between faith communities may be as great as those between faith communities
and the rest of society. Nevertheless, work on behalf of renewing politics in America may well
provide the means for faith communities to discover a common ground where they can work
together on behalf of our own society and God's world.
The hope of things
DEDICATION
to come
HAROLD HUGHES 1922-1996
The vision of "Restoring Faith in Politics"
GOVERNOR OF IOWA 1962-68
includes a range of associated activities
that could engage both church and
U.S. SENATOR 1968-74
political organizations.
"Restoring Faith in Politics" is dedicated
to the memory of Harold E. Hughes whose
An accompanying Advent Study
public service more than any this century
for use by Sunday Schools and
incamated the tenets of radical Christian faith
in the halls of American politics.
other church groups to use in Dec'99
For many lowans, he was a holistic father
to prepare for Campaign 2000
figure: displaying his gifts and confessing
his faults with equal alacrity.
Distribution to religious and general
For many Americans, he is remembered
as brother-in-arms, whether battling
media as prelude to the nominating
enemies in war, addictions in rehab, or
process in 2000.
narrow minds on behalf of liberal causes.
For people of faith, Harold Hughes provided
passage into political life. Maybe it was
Seminar presentations at theological
because he was SO open about his own
seminaries and presidential libraries
experience of God. Maybe it was because
his speeches were like sermons and his
Church-sponsored issue forums leading
baritone the Voice of God. In any event,
to work for Harold Hughes' causes felt
up and running parallel to national political
like a divine vocation.
conventions with resolutions forwarded
To remember Harold Hughes in this way
to each political party.
is an invocation. May his memory serve
to inspire people of both politics and faith
with the courage of his convictions.
CO-EDITORS
Warren W.
WILEY
turned 13 in 1960, the age she was
confirmed by her local Methodist Church
LEE
was bom in Los Angeles in 1942.
He was baptized as an infant and
in Cedar Rapids, lowa and recruited by
grew up in the Korean Presbyterian
the Linn County Democratic Party to go door-to-door
Church near the campus of the University of Southern
canvassing for the first time. Ever since, her life has
California. In 1949 his family moved to South Central
been a near-even mix of religion and politics. She
L.A. where he attended public schools which were
graduated from the University of Iowa in 1969 and
predominantly black. He graduated from UCLA
during the next fifteen years worked for Iowa Democrats.
in 1963 and from Princeton Theological Seminary
Starting in the Congressional offices of John Culver and
in 1966. From 1966 to 1973 he served as the
Neal Smith she then served as press secretary for the
Associate Pastor of the Westminster Presbyterian
lowa Democratic Party and several campaigns for
Church in Los Angeles. Founded in 1904, it is the
Governor. In 1984 she was deputy director of the
largest African-American Presbyterian Church in
lowa/Mondale Caucus Campaign and went on to serve
the Western United States. He has also served
as on-site press secretary for the Democratic National
Presbyterian Churches in San Francisco's Chinatown
Convention Committee in San Francisco. Following that
and a Japanese-American congregation in El Cerrito,
fall election she answered a long-standing call to ministry
north of Berkley. From 1973 to 1977 and from 1981
and after training at Perkins School of Theology at
to the present he has served on the faculty of San
Southern Methodist University, has been pastor to
Francisco Theological Seminary where he is professor
congregations in the Texas Panhandle, England and now,
of Asian-American ministry and an administrator in the
Massachusetts. She is an ordained minister in the British
Advanced Pastoral Studies program. He is author of
Methodist Church and was national vice-chair of the
A Dream for South Central: the autobiography
Christian Socialist Movement during the 1997 election
of an Afro-Americanized Korean Minister, a
that restored the Labour Party to power.
a personal and theological response to volatile events
in Los Angeles in 1992.