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How is it that Christians, called to dispense the aroma of amazing grace, instead pollute the world with the noxious fumes of ungrace? If grace is so amazing, why don't Christians show more of it?

Because I am writing in the United States in the 1990s, one answer to that question springs readily to mind. The church has allowed itself to get so swept up in political and cultural issues that it has adopted the rules of power, the rules of ungrace. In no other arena is the church at greater risk of losing its calling than in the public square.

I had a rude introduction to the polarization in our society when I visited the White House during Bill Clinton's first term as one of a group of 12 evangelicals invited to a private breakfast.

"The President has no agenda," we were assured. "He simply wants to hear your concerns." It took little political savvy to realize that the President was convening such a meeting primarily because of his low standing among evangelical Christians. Indeed, he addressed some of those concerns in his opening remarks at breakfast. As a lifelong Southern Baptist, he said, he was finding it difficult to find a Christian community in Washington, D.C., "the most secular city I've ever lived in."

"Sometimes I feel like a spiritual orphan," explained Clinton. When the First Family goes to church, it turns into a media circus, hardly conducive to worship. Few of his staff members (whom, of course, he had appointed) shared his concern for faith. Moreover, the conservative Christian community had dissociated itself from him. When the President jogged through the streets of Washington he saw bumper stickers like this one: "A vote for Bill Clinton is a sin against God." Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry was publicly labeling the Clintons "Ahab and Jezebel." And Clinton's own Southern Baptist denomination had entertained a motion to censure his home church in Arkansas for not kicking him off its membership rolls. In short, the President had not experienced much grace from Christians.

Of course, everyone in the Lincoln dining room that morning knew why the President was stirring up such animosity among Christians. His policies on abortion and homosexual rights, in particular, as well as reports of his own moral failings, made it difficult for many Christians to take seriously his profession of faith. One respected Christian leader had told me, "Bill Clinton cannot possibly be sincere about his faith and hold the views that he does."

I wrote an article about that breakfast, and a few months later I received another invitation from the White House, this time offering an exclusive magazine interview with the President. The interview took place in February, most of it conducted in the presidential limousine. After Mr. Clinton gave a speech to an inner-city school, David Neff, executive editor of CT, and I accompanied him on the long ride back to the White House. We sat facing each other in the back of the limousine—which, though spacious, still cramped the long legs of the President. Taking occasional sips of water from a paper Dixie cup in order to soothe his perennially strained throat, Mr. Clinton answered our questions.

Much of our conversation centered on the abortion issue. That morning all of us had attended the National Prayer Breakfast, at which Mother Teresa had boldly dressed down the President for the terrible plague of abortion in this country. Clinton had met with her privately after the breakfast, and he seemed anxious to continue the discussion with us.

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February 3 1997, Vol. 41, No. 2