The former president was clear about his own position on critical issues of the day. Mr. Clinton, who twice vetoed legislation that would have banned partial-birth abortions, commented: "I have never met anybody who is pro-abortion, and that's not what pro-choice means. It just means we don't want to criminalize the mothers and doctors." That is absolute nonsense. The women wearing "I Had an Abortion" t-shirts at the Democratic National Convention last month were not merely "pro-choice." They celebrated abortion itself. Mr. Clinton knows full well that "pro-choice" effectively means unqualified support for abortion on demand.

Addressing the issues of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, Mr. Clinton asserted, "I am not ashamed to believe that gay people shouldn't be discriminated against, and I don't think Jesus had much to say about that." In those few words, Mr. Clinton offered about as much theological and moral confusion as one sentence can bear. First of all, it was President Clinton who in 1996 signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA]. Has he now changed his mind? Apparently so, for when he now argues against all forms of discrimination, he certainly implies that this would extend to the most controversial issues of the current debate. More troubling, when the former president asserted that Jesus had little to say about homosexuality, he was playing an intricate theological game that must be named for what it is. Taking his argument seriously, Mr. Clinton rejects what the Bible so clearly teaches about homosexuality--in passages ranging from the Old Testament to the letters of the Apostle Paul--and explains this solely on the basis that Jesus made no direct comments concerning homosexuality itself. This is a direct subversion of the authority of scripture. If the entirety of scripture is not true, trustworthy, and authoritative, then the church has absolutely nothing of significance to say, not only on homosexuality, but on any issue of importance. Since Bill Clinton's edition of the "red letter" Bible includes no specific statements by Jesus about homosexuality, the former president obviously feels free to contradict the Apostle Paul, the wisdom of the church, the structure of divine law, and the Christian consensus throughout twenty centuries. Yet he did so without batting an eye.

In the most fascinating section of his sermon, the former president encouraged his congregation to lean into ambiguity when interpreting the Bible. Recalling a conversation with former SBC president H. Edwin Young, Mr. Clinton went on to draw a moral from the story. "I will never forget a conversation I had in 1993 with the then-president of the SBC--a man I like very much and whose sermons I still watch on television when I get the chance. He's a great pastor, but he belongs to the values voter crowd. And he looked at me and said, 'I just want an answer, not a political answer, a straight yes or no answer: Do you believe the Bible is literally true?' I said, 'Pastor, I think it is completely true, but I don't believe you or I or anyone on earth is smart enough to understand it completely.'"