“I think you have to speak out against that,” said Hillary Clinton. “You certainly have to do that, if not explicitly, then implicitly by getting up and moving.”

Clinton was talking about what she would have done had she been in Jeremiah Wright’s church.
But would she have?

The former first lady has her own Jeremiah Wright. His name is Bill Clinton.

“You don’t choose your family but you choose what church you want to attend,” she said.
But you do choose your husband.

She chose Bill Clinton. And she has not gotten up and moved.

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Thinking back on last week with the Pope it struck me that he was, like the words in the old Kris Kristofferson song, “a walking contraction,” beginning with his demeanor.

We had been expecting “the enforcer” and the "Rotweiller, “ not the good Shepherd but a
German Shepherd. Instead, we saw a man who was quiet, soft-spoken, gentle, self-effacing, a bit solemn and non-confrontational. His body language at the beginning of the week spoke of a man who was slightly uncomfortable with all of the attention and fanfare, someone who would much rather be in the background, reading theology.

By the end of the week he had loosened up considerably, he was clearly more at ease, smiling much more and seemed to be actually enjoying himself. Naturally, getting the unprecedented welcome from the president and a great press didn’t hurt. By the time he left New York, he was -- for this man -- practically euphoric, raising his arms in blessing with a confidence that belied the tentativeness of his first day.

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Here are a few areas of contradiction that struck me.

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Quiz

See if you can tell who said what in this list of quotes: Answers at the bottom.

1. After 9/11, in a debate at Wheaton College with conservative Gary Bauer, Bauer said, “I know this is hard for you to believe, but the enemy is not John Ashcroft, the enemy is Osama Bin Ladin:

Our first mystery guest said: “I’m not sure about that. When you start taking away the rights of the American citizens, when you undercut the Bill of Rights in order to pursue security, I think you become more dangerous than Bin Laden. I think that if this country goes down, it will not be because of the enemies that are outside this country. I think that if this country goes down, it’s because those within the country undercut our basic rights, undercut the principles that gave birth to this institution.”

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Much has been made in the past week about the words of the Rev. Jeremiah A.Wright, Jr., Barack Obama’s former pastor at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ.

Over the years the now retired Wright has made a number of incendiary comments. People have reacted most strongly to one he made five years ago. “The government, “said Wright”,” gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America. No, No, no. God damn America! That’s in the Bible for killing innocent people.”

Obama repudiated the remarks, calling them “inflammatory and appalling”, and “vehemently” condemned them. “They in no way reflect and directly contradict my profound love for this country.” He also added that he did not “repudiate the man” who had married him and his wife and baptized his two daughters and “brought me to Christ.”

Both Obama detractors and supporters have been asking how he could not repudiate someone who could talk that way. Do we believe in guilt by association? Do we believe, as the bible says, to blame the sin but not the sinner.

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Once, just once, wouldn’t you love to see the politician up there at the lectern sweating bullets, apologizing for letting down his wife and family …. alone?

Once, just once, wouldn’t you love to see the wife issuing her own statement saying that what he had done was unacceptable and that she was leaving him?

Wouldn’t that be morally correct?

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Welcome to Divine Impulses, a regular video interview series with Sally Quinn, co-moderator of On Faith.

Go here to find Sally's interviews with:

Desmond Tutu, Anglican leader of South Africa

Tim Russert, host of NBC's Meet the Press

Peter Gomes, chaplain Harvard University

Christopher Hitchens, author and atheist

Richard Gere, actor, Buddhist activist

Rob Norris, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church, Bethesda, Md.

Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic

Bill Aiken, U.S. spokesman for Soka Gakkai International

Deepak Chopra, author, founder of Alliance for a New Humanity

Karen Armstrong, religion historian

Salman Ahmad, founder of Sufi rock band Junoon

Sam Lloyd, dean of Washington National Cathedral

Kerry and Chris Shook, founding pastors of Fellowship of The Woodlands Church near Houston

Francis Collins, geneticist, director of the National Genome Project

Thomas G. Bohlin, U.S. Vicar of Ope Dei

Barbara Blaine, founder of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

Keith Ellison, first Muslim elected to Congress

David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

Dwight Hopkins, professor, University of Chicago Divinity School.

‘Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom”

Whose quote is that? If you guessed Osama Bin Laden you are wrong, though it sounds like something only a theocratic leader might say.

In fact, it was Mitt Romney in his speech defending his faith last Thursday. What was so astounding about what he said was the tortured logic in which he defended his own right to believe in his faith, by completely excluding anyone of no faith. “Freedom and religion endure together or perish alone,” he continued.

It was as if he were in a bubble, completely disenfranchising million and millions of decent moral patriotic American citizens who were doubters, agnostics, freethinkers or atheists.

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It's the babies who make me cry. Even now, 25 years after my own newborn was at Children's National Medical Center, I can't see those tiny babies in incubators, hooked up to those machines, tubes coming out of every part of their bodies, without breaking down.

I went to Children's last week to see the new wing, an amazing place, years in the planning, that incorporated all of the ideas and suggestions that I and so many parents had contributed out of our experiences there.

I'm always determined to hold it together when I go there. I don't think it's a good idea to have a member of the board wandering up and down the halls weeping. And yet, last week, when I visited again and saw those children, their chests heaving slightly, struggling to breath, their hands curled up into little fists, their heads covered with miniature ski caps and even some with tiny sunglasses to keep the lights out of their eyes, I could barely contain myself. It's even harder when the parents are there. You see them hanging over the cribs, desperately trying to make some kind of physical contact with these precious creatures, the anxiety, fear and pain etched on their faces. They stare nervously at the heart monitor, jumping every time it emits a strange beep, hoping that it isn't a bad sign.

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When Jon Meacham and I first started this Web site a year ago this week, we had no idea how popular it would become.

We both felt strongly that religion was something that touched our lives in so many ways, whether we were believers or not, and that a conversation about religion by those of all faiths would be, at the very least, an interesting and challenging exercise. Little did we know.

This past year has been the most exciting, fulfilling and educational year I have ever spent in my life. I immersed myself in the subject in a way I never have before and I find what I have learned, the people I have met and the places I have been so exhilarating that I can hardly believe it’s me doing all of this.

When we started this I knew practically nothing about religion or the internet. I was not a believer (Jon Meacham is an Episcopalian, a practicing Christian) so I felt secure that I had his experience and knowledge to give us the grounding we needed. Even so it was such an unlikely subject for me to get involved with that even my husband was in shock. My friends still report people sidling up to them at cocktail parties and saying, “What’s with Sally and this religion thing?”

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Today is Veterans Day. I grew up an Army brat. After Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July, the two days we remembered in our family were Veterans Day and Memorial Day. My father, Lt. General William W. "Buffalo Bill" Quinn, a West Point graduate, would recount stories of how important it was to support and remember those who had fought for our country.

My father was a great patriot. An Episcopalian, he was also a religious man. “God and Country” were not just words to him. This was his credo.

During World War II he served as the G2 or Intelligence Officer for the Seventh Army in Germany. He was there the day the Army liberated Dachau, one of the most infamous of the Nazi Concentration camps. He had his staff photographer take pictures of what they saw when they arrived and he had scrapbooks made up of those unimaginably horrific images.

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Someone asked me about 10 years ago what I would like written on my epitaph. I responded immediately without even hesitating. “Good mother, good wife, good daughter, good friend.”

He was surprised at my answer. Not as surprised as I was, though. Most people, he said, talked about their careers. Funny, I hadn’t even thought about that. When did it all change? I’ve been pondering the question ever since, asking myself what really matters to me? What are my priorities? What are my goals? What gives my life meaning?

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“There has always been tension in Hinduism between sexuality and celibacy,” said Sudhir Kakar, a noted Indian psychoanalyst who also has translated--with “On Faith” panelist Wendy Doniger--the Kamasutra.

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Several years ago a friend asked me and a number of her other friends to write essays on what it means to be a woman. She was going to make a book out of it and give it to her daughter for her 21st birthday. I sat at the computer for hours and nothing came to me. Then, suddenly, I knew what to say. I bought a postcard with an alluring picture of a woman on it and I wrote simply, “Women have all the power.”

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Some years ago, I went to a health spa in California. I was exhausted and depressed from caring for a chronically ill and severely learning disabled child. One of the activities offered was a walk on the labyrinth.

I had never heard of a labyrinth, the kind you walk on. I thought it was a maze or a puzzle. The walk was described to me as a form of meditation. At first I refused, thinking it sounded too hokey for words. But finally out of curiosity I decided to try it.

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Believing in God is not a choice. Either you do or you don’t or you struggle with it. That does not make anyone a better or worse person because of what they can or cannot believe. I called myself an atheist (a person who believes there is no God) until a year ago, even though I hated that word. It always conjured up Madalyn Murrary O’Hair, that unfortunate woman who was the spokesperson for years of the movement. Now if only it could have been Angelina Jolie…I became an atheist when I was six, though I didn’t know the word then. When I was 13 and had learned the word, I declared myself to my parents, both Protestants, who were horrified. The fact was, though, I just didn’t, couldn’t believe.

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My son Quinn, 24, believes in God. I did not know this until yesterday when I talked with him for this essay.

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I am sitting here looking at a beautiful picture of my family. My husband and son, my parents, my brother and sister and her family. We are all smiling. We are clearly having a wonderful time. We are sitting at the Thanksgiving table 13 years ago. The candles are glowing, the plates are empty, the wine glasses refilled. You can almost feel the joy emanating from the photograph. It was, my father said that day, “the happiest Thanksgiving our family has ever had. I’ve never felt so much love in my life.” And then, in a prescient moment, he said, “It will never be like this again.” How did he know?

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I am an Army brat, brought up on Army Posts all over the world where the closest thing to religion was the non-denominational chapel on whatever Army base we happened to be near. I announced to my parents when I was 13 that I was an atheist. And I was a committed atheist all of my life. My view was that more evil had been done in the name of religion than anything else in the world.I saw no redeeming value in it at all. Then I met Jon Meacham and we began talking.

No, Jon didn't convert me, but he did convince me that religion was not a subject to be dismissed or disdained. I began reading and studying and talking to people about religion and spirituality with Jon as my guide. My reaction to what I learned was threefold. First, I was embarrassed that I had shrugged off a subject that was so important to so many people in the world, particularly since I was a reporter of politics and culture. Secondly, I was amazed at how fascinating and exciting the study of religion was -- and the more I learned, the more immersed in it I became. Third, I was moved by the yearning for something beyond oneself that drew so many people, even the doubters, to search for faith, especially after 9/11.

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