    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [February 5, 1998]
    [Pages 172-173]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast
    February 5, 1998

        Thank you very much. Thank you very much to my good friend and
    sometimes golfing partner, Senator Akaka, to
    all the Members of Congress here, Reverend Graham, other head table guests, ladies and gentlemen,
    especially to the organizers of this wonderful event.
        For 5 years now, Hillary and I have looked forward to this day. For
    me it's a day in which I can be with other people of faith and pray and
    ask for your prayers, both as President and as just another child of
    God. I have done it for 5 years, and I do so again today.
        At each of these breakfasts, from our shared experiences and our
    prayers, God's grace always seems to come, bringing strength and wisdom
    and peace. Today I come more than anything else to say thank you. First,
    thank you, Connie Mack, for your wonderful
    message and the power of your example. I also thank all of you here for
    many things in the last 5 years and ask your help in helping us to work
    together to make our Nation better and the work that God has sent me to
    do and you to do.
        I thank you for helping me to strike blows for religious liberty--
    with the work so many of you in this room have done to help us to
    protect the rights of Federal employees to follow their faith at work--
    our students in school. In particular, I want to thank Reverend Don
    Argue, the former president of the National
    Association

    [[Page 173]]

    of Evangelicals, and Rabbi Arthur Schneier
    and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Newark, Theodore
    McCarrick, who next week will go to
    China to look into religious practices there and to begin a dialog there
    in the hopes that a part of our relationship with China will be about
    our concern for the kind of religious liberty we have practiced here
    this morning.
        I thank so many of you in the community of faith who have worked
    with the Government in partnership to help move poor families from
    welfare to work, to honor the scripture that our friend Dorothy
    Height read today. And I ask more of you to
    join in. I thank those of you who have been responsible for working with
    me--and I see Senator Grassley out there
    and Harris Wofford is here--to bring
    communities of faith into the circle of national service.
        We now have 5,000 young Americans working with religious
    organizations earning the AmeriCorps scholarship to go to college with
    after they serve with their community of faith wherever they live in
    America. And the Congress has provided for many more positions, and I
    ask you to help us to enlist more young Americans to give meaning to
    their lives, to live out their faith, and to help make our country a
    better place.
        I thank you for the prayers, the letters, the scriptural instruction
    that I have gotten from so many of you and many others around this
    country in recent weeks and, indeed, in the last 5 years. And I ask that
    they continue.
        Finally, I couldn't help thinking when Connie Mack was talking that
    what we all need very much is to take what we feel when we're here every
    year and keep it close with us when we leave here every year, day-in and
    day-out, week-in and week-out, in good times and bad. And I ask for your
    help in that.
        We have a difficult decision that we are facing now, as a country
    and our administration, because of the concern all Americans have that
    we not expose our children, if we can help it, to the dangers of
    chemical and biological warfare. And last night I came across a
    scripture verse that a friend of mine sent me in the last 72 hours that
    I had not had the chance to read, a prayer of King Solomon that I ask
    you to keep in mind as we face this decision. Solomon said in 1 Kings,
    ``I am only a little child, and I do not know how to carry out my
    duties. Your servant is here among people you have chosen, a great
    people, too numerous to count or number. So give your servant a
    discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right
    and wrong, for who is able to govern this great people of yours.''
        I also ask for your prayers as we work together to continue to take
    our country to higher ground and to remember the admonition of Micah,
    which I try to repeat to myself on a very regular basis. I ask your
    prayers that I, and we, might act justly and love mercy and walk humbly
    with our God.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:11 a.m. in the International Ballroom at
    the Washington Hilton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to evangelist
    Rev. Billy Graham; Senator Connie Mack; Rev. Don Argue, president,
    National Association of Evangelicals; Rabbi Arthur Schneier, president,
    Appeal of Conscience Foundation; and Dorothy Height, chairman of the
    board, National Council of Negro Women.