[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 37, Number 2 (Monday, January 15, 2001)]
[Pages 24-26]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the Foundry United Methodist Church

January 7, 2001

    Reverend Wogaman, staff, choir, congregation of this wonderful 
church. I would like to thank many people in this audience, but if I 
might, a few by name.
    My good friend Bishop May, and Mrs. May, thank you for being here. 
My councilman, Mr. Evans, and Mrs. Evans, thank you so much for your 
friendship and for being here. [Laughter] Senator Max Cleland, my friend 
of many years, before either one of us were in our present positions--
surprising all but our mothers by our success. [Laughter] I am so proud 
of you, sir, and I thank you for all you have done.
    I think of this church when reading the words of Paul that Hillary 
cited earlier, speaking of his gratitude to the Thessalonians, or 
constantly remembering their work of faith, their labor of love, their 
steadfastness of hope. I thank Foundry for all that and for being a 
church home to my family these last 8 years.
    I thank especially those of you who were so kind to Chelsea over the 
years, who provided her opportunities to participate in the life of the 
church, especially in the Appalachia service project, from which she 
learned so much. I thank those of you who have taken special care to 
befriend Hillary and to support her. And I thank you especially for the 
wonderful welcome you gave her last week, when she came back here for 
the first time as a Senator-to-be.
    I thank you all for your prayers and your welcome to all of us in 
the storm and sunshine of these last 8 years. I will always have 
wonderful memories of every occasion where we passed the peace, for all 
the people, young and old, who came up to me and said a kind word of 
welcome, to remind me that no matter what was going on in Washington, 
DC, at the moment, there was a real world out there with real people and 
real hearts and minds reaffirming the timeless wisdom of de 
Tocqueville's observation so long ago, that America is great because 
America is good. You cannot imagine the peace, the comfort, the strength 
I have drawn from my Sundays here. I want to thank you for a few other 
things.
    For the social mission of this church, especially for your outreach 
to the homeless, which I have been honored to support. And for your 
constant support of my efforts to bring peace in the Middle East and 
Kosovo and Northern Ireland and the other trouble spots of the world, 
where there are people suffering who have no money or power, too often 
overlooked by great nations with great interests.
    I want to thank you for making Foundry a true community church, 
welcoming Christians from all races and all nations with all kinds of 
abilities and disabilities, some seen and some not. I thank you 
especially for the kindness and courage of Foundry's welcome to gay and 
lesbian Christians, people who should not feel outside the family of 
God.
    I thank you for your support for the city of Washington, for its 
economic and social revitalization, which I have done my best to speed, 
and for giving its citizens the political equality and statehood I have 
always believed that it deserved, as my license plate shows--
[laughter]--and will for at least a couple more weeks. [Laughter]
    Especially, I would like to thank Reverend Wogaman for being my 
pastor and friend,

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my counselor and teacher. Most of you know that for more than 2 years 
now, he and two other minister friends of mine have shared the burden of 
meeting with me on a weekly basis. It has been an immense blessing to me 
and to my service as President.
    Two weeks from yesterday, at high noon, I will relinquish my office, 
doing so with a heart filled with gratitude, gratitude to the American 
people for the chance to serve and to leave our country with more 
opportunity, stronger bonds of community, and a more positive impact in 
the larger world, at the dawn of a new century and a whole new aspect of 
human affairs.
    Our Nation has come a long way together these last 8 years, and I am 
profoundly grateful to have had the opportunity to play a part in it. In 
the years ahead, America may have Presidents who do this job better than 
I have. But I really doubt we'll ever have another one who enjoyed it 
more than I have. [Laughter]
    Well, those are my reflections. I didn't know what the title of my 
sermon was until I picked up the program, as I walked into church. 
[Laughter]
    What do I anticipate? I anticipate that my Christian bearing will be 
tested by a return to commercial air travel--[laughter]--where I will 
reap the rewards of not having succeeded in one of the things I tried 
very hard to do, which was to end all those backlogs.
    I anticipate that for some several months I will be disoriented when 
I walk into large rooms, because no one will be playing a song anymore. 
[Laughter] I look forward to finding out whether John Quincy Adams was 
right when he said, ``There is nothing so pathetic in life as an ex-
President''--[laughter]--or whether, instead of his words, the life of 
John Quincy Adams and the life of Jimmy Carter prove exactly the 
reverse.
    In the next chapter of my life I will do my best to use the 
incredible opportunities my country has given me to be a good citizen 
here at home and around the world, to advance the causes I believe in, 
and to lift the fortunes and hopes of those who deserve a better hand 
than they have been dealt, whether in Africa, Asia, Latin America, or 
Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, the inner cities, or the Native 
American reservations. I will try every day to remember--as apparently 
for the first time in my life I will be able to earn a sizable income--
[laughter]--that Christ admonished us that our lives will be judged by 
how we do unto the least of our neighbors.
    I will also do my best to keep working for peace and reconciliation 
among people across their differences, to find ways to get people to 
move beyond tolerance to celebration of those differences. I know it's 
sort of out of fashion, but I've kind of grown impatient with the word 
``tolerance,'' because tolerance implies that someone who's better than 
someone else is decent enough to put up with them. And I think we need 
to move beyond that.
    We are moving into the most incredible era of human affairs the 
world has ever known, in terms of our interdependence, our capacity to 
relate to people across national and cultural and religious lines, and 
our ability to use these breathtaking advances in technology with 
advances in biomedical sciences to lengthen and improve lives in ways 
that previously are literally unimaginable.
    And yet, the biggest threat we face is the oldest problem of 
humankind, the fear of the other, which can so easily lead to hatred and 
dehumanization and violence but, even if it doesn't go that far, limits 
the lives all of us might otherwise live.
    And I have spent a lot of time, as you might have noticed, in a 
reasonably combative arena. I am not without my competitive instincts. A 
lot of days I thought just showing up was an act of competition. 
[Laughter] But I do believe in the end, when all is said and done, what 
matters most is what we did that was common to our humanity. And 
somehow, I will do everything I can to advance that simple but powerful 
idea at home and around the world.
    I will also do my best to support my Senator and our daughter. And I 
will try to keep learning and growing, working to follow the example of 
the mythic Parsifal, a good man slowly wise.
    Thanks to the good people of New York, as Phil said, this is not 
really a goodbye but the beginning of a new chapter in our lives with 
Foundry. But it is a new chapter. So

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let me thank you again for letting all of us, Hillary, Chelsea, and me, 
make this part of our life's journey with you, for your constant 
reminder in ways large and small that though we have all fallen short of 
the glory, we are all redeemed by faith in a loving God.
    God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:40 a.m. In his remarks, he referred to 
Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, senior minister, Foundry United Methodist 
Church; Bishop Felton Edwin May, Washington Episcopal Area of the 
Methodist Church; and Washington, DC, City Councilmember Jack Evans, 
Ward 2, and his wife, Noel Soderberg Evans. Rev. Wogaman also serves as 
a spiritual counselor to the President, along with Rev. Gordon MacDonald 
and Rev. Tony Campolo.