Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Wesley Clark talks about his spiritual beliefs. He's regularly attended a few different churches in his life. Right now he considers himself a Catholic, but doesn't attend a Catholic church.
...One night I walked out of the church when the priest said that we should never have fought the Revolutionary War and every war was bad. It was 4th of July. It was an outrageously political statement. I just never felt right when people in the church would take these overtly political positions especially when I felt like I was a good Christian, I was serving my country, and I just didn't feel like I deserved to be lambasted by the priest on the 4th of July...
This passage really underscores the difficulty of reconciling a career in the military with a commitment to the Christian faith. I'd love to have a deep, off-the-record discussion with Clark about that.
Clark and his campaign make the right noises re: religious tolerance ("Wes Clark Sends Warm Greetings to Muslims for Eid Al-Fitr" today) and, earlier in the interview, we see that Clark loves his religion for its comfort and power of leadership and moral guidance. I'm more comfortable with that than with the crusader-like Christianity of George W. Bush.
