It Takes a Village

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

  Chelsea’s Sunday school teachers in Little Rock and Washington have helped her and her peers to explore and express ideas, worries, and fears, from getting along with parents who “just don’t understand” to dealing with teenage temptations. Churches are among the few places in the village where today’s teenagers can let down their guard and let off steam among adults who care about them. Churches that make kids feel welcome and supported are doing more than involving them in worship. As I have mentioned, a survey of teenagers’ attitudes and behaviors found that those who attend religious services regularly are less likely to experiment with risky behaviors like drug use. I wish more places of worship were open after school and on weekends to provide constructive activities for kids under adult supervision.

  Some churches are becoming villages in themselves, offering members access to state-of-the-art technology, family centers, and adult discussion groups on topics like marriage and parenting. Many churches, like mine in Little Rock, offer preschool and day care programs, and some now include athletic facilities and even restaurants. These churches provide a social center for people of all ages.

  But no matter how broadly churches and other places of worship are redefining and expanding their religious and social roles, the right to religious and spiritual expression extends beyond their boundaries. How do we protect that expression under the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion and its prohibition against any government “establishment” of religion? For children, this question often concerns the extent to which they may learn about religion and express their own religious convictions in our public schools. I share my husband’s belief that “nothing in the First Amendment converts our public schools into religion-free zones, or requires all religious expression to be left behind at the schoolhouse door,” and that indeed “religion is too important in our history and our heritage for us to keep it out of our schools.”

  On the other hand, we run into problems when people want to use governmental authority to promote school prayer or particular religious observances or to advocate sectarian religious beliefs. When public power is put behind specific religious views or expressions, it might infringe upon the companion freedom the First Amendment guarantees us to choose our own religious beliefs, including the right to choose to be nonreligious.

  To bring reason and clarity to this often contentious issue, my husband asked Secretary of Education Richard Riley and Attorney General Janet Reno to develop a statement of principles concerning permissible religious activities in the public schools. The complete guidelines, which are available at your local school district office or the Department of Education, include the following:

  Students may participate in individual or group prayer during the school day, as long as they do so in a non-disruptive manner and when they are not engaged in school activities or instruction.

  Schools that generally open their facilities to extracurricular student groups should also make them available to student religious organizations on the same terms.

  Students should be free to express their beliefs about religion in school assignments, and their work should be judged by ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance.

  Schools may not provide religious instruction, but they may teach about the Bible or other scripture (in the teaching of history or literature, for example). They may also teach civic values and virtue, and the moral code that binds us together as a community, so long as they remain neutral with respect to the promotion of any particular religion.

  This last point is particularly important, because it defines an area in which the role of religious institutions overlaps with the role of parents, schools, and the rest of the village: the responsibility of helping children to develop moral values, a social conscience, and the skills to deal with the issues they will confront in the larger world. Just as it is appropriate, often necessary, for schools and other institutions to help build character by teaching the values at the heart of religious creeds, it is also necessary for churches to connect the development of personal character to life in the world beyond home and church.

  My church took seriously its responsibility to build a connection between religious faith and the greater good of a society full of all kinds of people. I received my earliest lessons about how we were expected to treat other people by singing songs like “Jesus loves the little children / All the little children of the world / Red and yellow, black and white / They are precious in His sight.” Those words stayed with me longer than many earnest lectures about race relations. (To this day I wonder how anyone who ever sang them could dislike someone solely for the color of his skin.)

  My church’s youth minister, the Reverend Donald Jones, arranged for my youth group to share worship and service projects with black and Hispanic teenagers in Chicago. We discussed civil rights and other controversial issues of the day, sometimes to the discomfort of certain adults in the congregation. Reverend Jones took a group of us to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speak at Orchestra Hall (despite some church members’ suspicion that King was a Communist). We argued over the meaning of war to a Christian after seeing for the first time works of art like Picasso’s Guernica, and the words of poets like T. S. Eliot and e. e. cummings inspired us to debate other moral issues.

  I wish more churches—and parents—took seriously the teachings of every major religion that we treat one another as each of us would want to be treated. If that happened, we could make significant inroads on the social problems we confront.

  Many parents do make the teaching of these values an essential component of religious instruction, and many others see them as a focus in themselves. Like me, however, they have undoubtedly learned to recognize the look of young eyes glazing over at the first hint of a long-winded explanation of some principle. Better a story that demonstrates the spiritual and human qualities we wish to transmit to young people. In our bedtime reading and prayer ritual when Chelsea was younger, Bill and I read children’s versions of Bible stories to her. Cain and Abel exemplified envy and its consequences. David’s conflict with Goliath illustrated the power of faith in the face of overwhelming odds. Queen Esther’s courage in saving the Jews underscored the need for courage and careful planning before taking risky action. The Good Samaritan parable is an example of compassion toward people who are of different backgrounds. Religion is not just about one’s relationship with God, but about what values flow out of that relationship, how we follow them in our daily lives and especially in our treatment of our neighbors next door and all over the world.

  Stories about contemporary or historical figures can also make the point about the power of faith to give courage. One of my heroes when I was growing up was Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman elected to both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. I admired her courage in standing up to her fellow Republican Senator Joe McCarthy and his political smear tactics. In her essay “This I Believe,” she explained the core of her courage. “I believe that in our constant search for security we can never gain any peace of mind until we secure our own soul. And this I do believe above all, especially in my times of greater discouragement, that I must believe—that I must believe in my fellow men—that I must believe in myself—that I must believe in God—if life is to have any meaning.” I would add to Senator Smith’s eloquent statement of her belief that she translated it into action, and so must we if our convictions are to have meaning beyond ourselves.

  Preaching is a distant second to practicing when it comes to instilling values like compassion, courage, faith, fellowship, forgiveness, love, peace, hope, wisdom, prayer, and humility. By putting spiritual values in action, adults show children that they are not just for church or home but are to be brought into the world, used to make the village a better place. It is not always easy to live what we believe, however. For example, while I believe there is no greater gift that God has given any of us than to be loved and to love, I find it difficult to love people who clearly don’
t love me. I wrestle nearly every day with the biblical admonition to forgive and love my enemies.

  THE STRUGGLE to live up to the spiritual values we profess is not only an individual one. Groups of people, even nations, can suffer from an absence or misuse of spirituality. The great physician and philosopher Albert Schweitzer likened the condition of the soul in modern life to sleeping sickness. He warned against the indifference and apathy that can overtake our lives in the absence of love for one another and for God.

  For the United States, that same warning was sounded by Lee Atwater, one of the political strategists credited with the victories of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. When Atwater was dying, he told a Life magazine reporter: “Long before I was struck with cancer, I felt something stirring in American society. It was a sense among the people of the country, Republicans and Democrats alike, that something was missing from their lives, something crucial…. I don’t know who will lead us through the ’90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.”

  I cut out that passage and put it in a little book of sayings and Scriptures that I keep. And I think the answer to his question—“Who will lead us out of this spiritual vacuum?”—must be all of us. Not just our government, not just our institutions, not just our leaders and preachers and rabbis, but all of us must renew our own sense of spirituality and work to live up to its expectations and values.

  As we engage in that renewal, though, we have to beware of the misuse of religion to further political, personal, even commercial agendas. If we employ it as an excuse for intolerance, divisiveness, or violence, we betray its purpose, as did the extremists who employed religious rhetoric to justify assassinating Prime Minister Rabin of Israel. The “true believer” who proclaims that God or the Gospel or the Torah or the Koran favors a particular political action and that anyone who opposes him is on the side of the Devil is asserting an absolutist position that permits no compromise, no deference to the will of the majority, no acceptance of decisions by those in authority—all necessities for the functioning of any democracy.

  Religion is about God’s truth, but none of us can grasp that truth absolutely, because of our own imperfections and limitations. We are only children of God, not God. Therefore, we must not attempt to fit God into little boxes, claiming that He supports this or that political position. This is not only bad theology; it marginalizes God. As Abraham Lincoln said, “The Almighty has His own purposes.” Even in dealing with political issues that have serious moral implications, we must be careful to avoid demonizing those who disagree with us, or acting as if we have a monopoly on truth.

  People of faith belong to the larger village along with other citizens, the majority of whom share many—but not all—of their values. Our laws are designed to permit us to live in harmony, even when we have serious differences over religious and political matters. But to achieve that harmony, more than law is required; mutual tolerance and respect are also necessary.

  I have been privileged to meet some of our world’s great religious leaders, among them Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists. Despite their profound differences, each speaks from a deep wellspring of love that affirms life and yearns for men and women to open their hearts like children to God and one another. Indeed, given the spiritual inclination of children, it is fitting that in many religious traditions they lead the way to spiritual awareness and enlightenment. As the Bible says, “And a little child shall lead them.” When we find ourselves growing impatient, ungrateful, or intolerant, children can remind us to appreciate our daily blessings, to practice kindness, even to love our enemies. As children’s spirituality blossoms, it will—if we let it—open in the hearts of adults a greater capacity to care for all children, to take responsibility for them and to pray for their futures. And when we pray for others, we often find in ourselves the energy to put ourselves to work on their behalf.

  At the same time, prayer allows us to let go of our children and to let them find their own ways, with faith to guide and sustain them against the cruelties and indifference of the world. In her book of prayer, Guide My Feet, Marian Wright Edelman looks back upon a childhood that was a marvelous mixture of spiritual joy and exuberant, though disciplined, family and communal life. She writes: “We black children were wrapped up and rocked in a cradle of faith, song, prayer, ritual, and worship which immunized our spirits against some of the meanness and unfairness…in our segregated South and acquiescent nation.” I have seen that immunity at work in my own life and the lives of others. But someone must inoculate each new generation, and then administer “booster shots” through example and ritual.

  In the first part of her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou recounts the rape she experienced as a child, which left her mute for several years. Her life today represents a triumph of spirit that she attributes in part to the deep spirituality she developed as a traumatized child. “Of all the needs…a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God.” Amen.

  Childhood Can Be a Service Academy

  A candle loses nothing of its light by lighting another candle.

  JAMES KELLER

  For a few weeks every autumn, when the fields around Chicago were ripe for harvesting, children of Mexican migrant workers joined our classes at the Eugene Field School in Park Ridge. They never stayed long, because their families were always moving on to the next harvest. One year, a boy who was older than I and big for his age took to pushing me and my friends around on the playground. Whatever motivated him, his bullying quickly aroused my fear and dislike. My reactions to this one boy might well have spilled over to my feelings about the rest of the migrant kids if my mother had not encouraged me to volunteer, along with other girls in my church youth group, to baby-sit for the migrants’ younger children on Saturdays so that their older brothers and sisters—my classmates—could join their parents working in the fields.

  Just seeing the camp where the families lived made me think for the first time about how my classmates spent their time when they were not in school. I had never before known people who lived in trailers. When we went inside, the mothers seemed nervous about leaving their babies and toddlers in the care of twelve-year-olds who spoke no Spanish. I began to realize that the lack of familiarity cut both ways.

  The day passed uneventfully, and when the mothers returned, they expressed their pleasure at seeing their children well cared for. It was the return of the fathers, though, that made the greatest impression on me. When the buses dropped them off at the base of the long road to the trailer camp, the children ran as fast as they could to greet them. They were filled with excitement, the same excitement I felt when my own father came home from work at the end of the day. Suddenly those migrant children didn’t seem so different from me. This brief encounter helped me begin to appreciate the importance of making judgments about individuals instead of stereotyping whole groups. It also gave me a lot of satisfaction at an early age to be serving families who worked so hard for so little.

  There is probably no more important task parents—and the rest of the village—face than raising children not only to tolerate but to respect the differences among people and to recognize the rewards that come from serving others. I call this affirmative living—the positive energy we derive from taking pride in who we are and from having the confidence and moral grounding to reach out to those who are different. As Elie Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has said, “Everything becomes possible by the mere presence of someone who knows how to listen, to live, and to give of himself.”

  Learning to live affirmatively begins with the way we feel about ourselves. Children who grow up thinking of their own lives in positive terms are more likely to value the lives of others as well. Religious teachings remind us that we are to love others as we love ourselves. Loving one
self is not a matter of narcissism or egocentrism; it means respecting yourself and feeling affirmed in your identity.

  I have described in this book some of the many ways in which parents and the village can help children to develop a positive sense of themselves. When we give children the nurturing, time, and care they need, they are more likely to develop emotional intelligence, confidence in their intellectual abilities, and the capacity to cope with life’s adversities. These qualities are important not only in themselves but because they help children to become good citizens who contribute to the quality of life in their communities and to our ongoing civilization.

  As educator William Damon writes in Greater Expectations: “Even if our children were being raised to become the best informed, most artistic, and healthiest children that the world has ever seen, it would all come to nothing unless they found some things beyond themselves…. They would still need to develop a sense of social responsibility…. Otherwise they could not live together in a decent society, nor pass along what is left of the culture to their own children.”

  A first step in teaching children to live affirmatively is to give them a strong sense of identity, rooted in their heritage. But that is only half the task. We know what happens when children are raised to think that their particular heritage makes them better than everyone else. A false sense of superiority or self-righteousness can lead to the exclusion, ridicule, and harassment of other people and, in extreme cases, to violence, as we have seen with ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, tribal warfare in Rwanda, religious conflict in the Middle East.

  Therefore, as we help children create a positive identity, one with meaning and purpose in the world, a sense of responsibility toward and respect for others needs to be nurtured along with it. The remarkable lives of A. Elizabeth (Bessie) and Sarah (Sadie) Delany, whom I had the privilege to visit when they were 103 and 105 years old respectively, are testimony to this point. Anyone who has read their books or seen the Broadway play based on Having Our Say has learned the importance of never forgetting who you are. The Delany sisters’ father had been a slave, a fact he did not hide; instead, he used it to pass on to his children a profound belief in their worth and potential. The Delany children learned to honor their parents and the sacrifices they had made. Their parents not only suffused them with love but instilled in them a sense of right and wrong, an ethic of hard work, and a clear understanding of their responsibilities as human beings.