[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book II)]
[October 23, 1998]
[Pages 1851-1854]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks Celebrating the 160th Anniversary of the Metropolitan
African Methodist Episcopal Church
October 23, 1998

    Thank you very much, ``Reverend'' Green. [Laughter] You know, Ernie 
was doing so well up here, it reminded me about what my grandmother used 
to say to me. She said, ``Bill, I

[[Page 1852]]

think you could have been a preacher if you'd been just a little better 
boy.'' [Laughter]
    I want to thank Ernie Green for his lifetime of friendship. I thank 
my longtime friend Secretary Slater, who has done a magnificent job in 
our Cabinet. I am delighted to be here with Secretary Togo West and 
Mayor Barry, Congresswoman Norton, Johnnie Booker, Bishop Anderson, 
Reverend Harvey, Assistant HUD Secretary Cardell Cooper, many members of 
our White House staff. And I'm really glad to be here with Gwen Ifill. I 
told the Bishop on the way in--and Reverend Harvey--I said, you know, 
Gwen Ifill's daddy was an AME preacher. And we used to talk about the 
AME back in 1992 when I was--back when I had a life, when I was a real 
citizen, and I was running for President and she was covering me. And 
you know, when you get in the press corps in Washington, you tend to 
drift away. And I'm glad to see her back, getting close to the faith 
again tonight here, working with all of you. [Laughter] It's very good.
    I wish you a happy 160th birthday. I thank you more than you will 
ever know for the prayers, the friendship to me and to my family over 
these last few months and, indeed, over these last many years. And I am 
honored to have been invited to be with you on this occasion. And 
believe you me, I am very happy that we wound up those Middle East peace 
talks today, so I could be here.
    It is now 8:30, and I have been awake for 36 hours and 30 minutes. 
[Laughter] I think I can finish tonight. [Laughter] But in these last 9 
days, when I have come home at 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning almost 
every night--and then last night, we had to work the whole night 
through--then it looked as if we were going to lose everything we had 
worked for. And then it came back together again. I felt so blessed to 
have had the opportunity to engage in these labors, to do this for our 
country, for the cause of peace, for the land of our faiths, the home of 
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. I felt that it was a part of my job as 
President, my mission as a Christian, and my personal journey of 
atonement. And I am grateful that God gave me the chance to do this for 
the last 9 days.
    The agreement that the Israelis and the Palestinians signed is a big 
step. It gives Israel genuine security, the cooperation of their 
neighbors among the Palestinians in fighting terrorism, the recognition 
that Israel has a right to be there, now and forever. It gives the 
Palestinian people at long last a chance to realize their aspirations to 
live free, in safety, in charge of their own destiny.
    How tragic it is that two different groups of people, each who have 
known so much oppression in life, so much deprivation, so much downright 
abuse, because there is such a little bit of land there and so much 
accumulated insecurity, would be fighting with each other when they 
should be embracing one another. Now they have a chance to do that.
    There's no way in 9 short days to wipe away decades of distrust. But 
you can do an awful lot in 9 days if you just lock people in a room 
and--[laughter]--see how well they get along. I believe if we can 
maintain the will and the momentum for peace, the future is bright 
there. But I also believe that we have to be realistic. There are 
enemies of peace. And in some ways, the very advance these people have 
made together will make them both more appealing targets to those who 
believe their lives only have meaning when they are hurting someone 
else, that they can only lift themselves up when someone else is being 
put down.
    I say that to make a point about this church. I think the most 
moving thing to me about the last 9 days were the periodic visits to the 
peace talks of King Hussein of Jordan. Many of you know that he has been 
treated at the Mayo Clinic for several months for a serious illness. 
He's lost a lot of weight, and as he joked today, he's lost his hair, 
and what little he's got left, even in his mustache, has turned white. 
But even though he was the smallest person in the room, he was always 
the largest presence. Here was a man fighting for his own life, willing 
to take time to remind the people at the peace talks of what it was 
really all about.
    I thought about today, when we were signing, that Mr. Netanyahu was 
in the Israeli commandos. Some of you may remember that his brother was 
the commander of the famous raid by the Israeli soldiers on Entebbe and 
Uganda, where they liberated their people who had been kidnapped, but 
his brother was killed. Mr. Arafat has been in battle after battle for 
decades. King Hussein, himself, was a jet fighter pilot; in the Israeli 
Cabinet now, two of the great generals in the history of Israel, Ariel 
Sharon and the Defense Minister, General Mordechai. And I think all 
these people have come to a common

[[Page 1853]]

realization, that in life all of our victories over other people are 
ultimately hollow, and the only victories that really matter are those 
that we win for our common humanity.
    And when King Hussein would walk in the room, people would see that 
he was frail, but strong of heart and voice. And he would admonish them 
to think of their children and grandchildren and to let go of some of 
their resentments and suspend some of their distrust and make one more 
reach. You could see, almost like a balm washing over the parties, how 
their attitudes would shift, and their hearts would open, and they would 
resolve to try again and try again.
    That, after all, is the lesson of the church, isn't it? That is, 
children of God--the real victories in life are not the victories we win 
over other people. They are the victories we win for our common humanity 
as children of God. So this was a victory for the peace.
    Exodus says that ``If thou shalt do as God command thee, the people 
shall go to their place in peace.'' The Koran says, ``They shall not 
hear therein any vain discourse, but only peace.''
    A couple of years ago, I almost gave a sermon at one of my State of 
the Unions because I took the theme from the 12th verse of the 58th 
chapter of Isaiah: ``They that shall be of thee shall build up the old 
waste places. Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations. 
Thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths 
to dwell in.'' That is the work in which we have been involved.
    But every good work is that kind of work. I thank God we have people 
like Eleanor Holmes Norton in the Congress of the United States to do 
that kind of work.
    This church has received people, in these 160 years, from Frederick 
Douglass to Mary McCloud Bethune to Nelson Mandela to Jesse Jackson to 
Ernie Green. It's easy to forget when you see old Ernie and all of his 
prosperity--[laughter]--that he was just a scared, skinny kid 41 years 
ago at Little Rock Central High School, enduring the jeers, the waving 
fists, for the simple proposition that he ought to have the right to get 
the best education he could. Today, Central High School has become a 
place in our history as hallowed as Gettysburg. Earlier this week, 
Congress passed a bill to officially designate Little Rock Central High 
School as a national historic site. And thanks to our Senator from 
Arkansas and others, the budget bill I signed authorizes me to give 
Congressional Gold Medals to each and every member of the Little Rock 
Nine.
    The victory they won was not over the Governor who tried to keep 
them out, not over the angry racial epithets of those who hurled them. 
It was a victory for all of us, even those who opposed their entry into 
the school.
    How did people keep on going? Rodney reminded me when back when I 
was Governor, and Rodney worked for me, and we had--he didn't have such 
a big, fancy office, and he wasn't so far away--[laughter]--we used to 
talk all the time about Bible verses and first one thing and another, 
and he knew that one of my favorite verses was the ninth verse of the 
sixth chapter of St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians. And he mentioned it 
to me tonight because of the Middle East peace talks: ``Let us not grow 
weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose 
heart.'' After about 30 hours, I was beginning to lose the admonition of 
the Scripture. [Laughter]
    But what is it that gives people the power not to grow weary? What 
is the message emanating from this church, not only from this great 
pastor, whom I have had the privilege of sharing worship with, but for 
160 years--that we walk by faith and not by sight? This is not a science 
course: faith in a loving and protective God; faith in the righteousness 
of worship; faith in a citizen's ability to be guided by respect for 
others and justice and equality and freedom; ultimately, faith not only 
in our God but in what our country is and what it can become. We walk by 
faith and not by sight, the assurance of things hoped for, the 
conviction of things unseen.
    What a dreary world it would be if we had only to live with what was 
before us. If we could not imagine how things could be different, if 
there were no faith in the room I have occupied these last 9 days, I 
promise you there would be no agreement today.
    So that is what I come to thank you for. When something really 
important happens like this agreement today, when we win a good struggle 
in Congress, as Eleanor and I and our colleagues did, and against all 
the odds we prevail in our battle to put 100,000 teachers out there to 
lower the class size in the early grades, we know it wouldn't have 
happened because it wasn't rational when we started; or when we

[[Page 1854]]

are defeated, but we do not quit, even more importantly, we walk by 
faith, not by sight.
    And so, I came here to thank you for 160 years of that gift of faith 
that, without regard to the color of our skin or the condition of our 
pocketbook or even the stain of our past sins, we are all children of 
God.
    One of my favorite verses is the first verse in Isaiah 43 because it 
is the promise of faith: ``Fear not, for I have redeemed thee. I have 
called thee by thy name. Thou art mine.'' When you believe that, there's 
nothing you can't do. And if you don't do what you want to do, then you 
know God may have another plan. But you can still live with vision and 
hope; you can always be a repairer of the breach, and you are never 
stupid enough to think that beating somebody else out of something is 
what life is really all about. That is a gift, to this Capital City and 
to this country, that this church has given.
    I only want to say one other thing to you. For all the good things 
that have happened in our country--and I thank Ernie for mentioning 
them--for all the prosperity we enjoy, we still have many challenges. 
You know them well enough. You pick up the paper every day, and you know 
that there are still a lot of trouble spots in this old world. And as 
soon as we put out one fire, another one crops up. You know that for all 
of our prosperity, the world financial system is troubled, and you see 
it in other countries, the problems they're having. And we need to fix 
it, and I'm working on that.
    You know that when all us baby boomers, like me, retire, there will 
only be two people working for every one person drawing Social Security. 
And that's why I didn't want to spend that surplus until we fix Social 
Security for the 21st century. And so I say to you that even though we 
don't have all the answers, we also have to have faith that we can be 
good citizens. And when we're citizens, we have to realize, number one, 
we have a moral responsibility to exercise our franchise on November 3d. 
But we should be voting not just to defeat the people we don't vote for 
but, in a far larger sense, to find ways to reaffirm our common humanity 
as children of God. And I want you to think about that.
    President Franklin Roosevelt was a deeply religious man. On the day 
he died, he was working on a speech. And he would get these typewritten 
speeches that speechwriters would do, and then he'd get his ink pen, and 
he'd scratch through the words and write the words over and write a line 
here and a line there. This is the last line of the last speech the 
longest serving President in United States history, and certainly one of 
the greatest ones, ever wrote: ``The only limit to our realization of 
tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with a strong 
and active faith.''
    So, your faith is strong. For 160 years, it has been active. You 
have taken me in and, on occasions, given me the chance to have my 
inaugural memorial service here in this church--some of the best music I 
ever heard, some from your choir, and some I brought to you. [Laughter] 
And every time when I left, I felt like I was 10 feet tall. But you do, 
too, don't you? And when the choir was singing, you felt taller, didn't 
you? And you felt stronger, and your heart was lighter, and so was the 
load you carried when you came to this dinner tonight.
    So again I say to you, happy birthday. Thank you for 160 years of 
the gift of faith and the energy that flows from it. Be good citizens 
with your faith. Show up every chance you get. Don't grow weary in doing 
good. Don't be discouraged when it doesn't work out. And help me every 
day to convince America that the real victories we have to win are not 
our victories over one another, but the victories together we win for 
our common humanity as children of God.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:28 p.m. in the International Ballroom 
Center at the Washington Hilton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to 
event cochairs Ernest Green and Johnnie B. Booker, senior steward board 
members, and Rev. Dr. Louis-Charles Harvey, senior pastor, Metropolitan 
AME Church; Presiding Bishop Vinton Anderson, Second Episcopal District, 
AME Church; Mayor Marion S. Barry, Jr., of Washington, DC; Gwen Ifill, 
reporter, New York Times; King Hussein I of Jordan; Prime Minister 
Binyamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, and Defense Minister 
Yitzhak Mordechai of Israel; and Chairman Yasser Arafat of the 
Palestinian Authority. H.R. 4328, the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency 
Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, approved October 21, was assigned 
Public Law No. 105-277.