Having failed to win the White House in November and with a new book on the way, Hillary Clinton is reportedly looking at turning to a more publicly religious role. Her pastor is saying she wants to get into preaching.
According to The Atlantic, Clinton told her longtime pastor Bill Shillady, at a recent photo shoot for his new book, that she wants to preach — something that the outlet says has always been a dream for her.
This comes on the back of a report that Clinton told an editor in 1994 that she thought “all the time” about becoming a minister. Per the Atlantic:
Last fall, the former Newsweek editor Kenneth Woodward revealed that Clinton told him in 1994 that she thought “all the time” about becoming an ordained Methodist minister. She asked him not to write about it, though: “It will make me seem much too pious.” The incident perfectly captures Clinton’s long campaign to modulate—and sometimes obscure—expressions of her faith.
The revelation comes ahead of two Clinton-related books coming out in 2017. Clinton herself has written What Happened — a 500+ page campaign post-mortem about how she lost in November. But Shillady himself has a new book of devotions: “Strong for a Moment Like This: The Daily Devotions of Hillary Rodham Clinton” which has a forward by Clinton herself.
“Given her depth of knowledge of the Bible and her experience of caring for people and loving people, she’d make a great pastor,” Shillady told the Atlantic, but noted it would likely be more of a lay position such as a deaconess.
“I think it would be more of … her guest preaching at some point,” he said. “We have a long history of lay preachers in the United Methodist Church.”
The blurb for the book says it “includes 365 of the more than 600 devotions written for Clinton, along with personal notes, portions of her speeches, and headlines that provide context for that day’s devotion.”
“Clinton is writing the foreword, the first time post-election readers will have a chance to hear directly from her about her faith during this time,” the teaser for the book says.
Some Methodists have expressed their excitement for a Clinton move to the more spiritual side. Zach Hoag, writing for HuffPost, noted the “spiritual” character of her concession speech and suggested it may be a sign of Hillary’s resurgent religious focus.
“As a United Methodist, I’d be pumped to see Hillary take the pulpit in our church and dig from that deep well of experience, disappointment, and hope in a future harvest,” he wrote.
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY
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