June 24, 2008 | 11:51 am

Hillary Clinton and Capitol Hill Jesus

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Speaking of “The Family,”, the secret fundamentalist group with a surprising hand in American and foreign politics, the organization is not, I repeat not, limited to Republicans. One prominent Democrat affiliated with this new world order is Hillary Clinton, who either isn’t the Antichrist after all or is overcompensating like Barack Obama at AIPAC. The details appear in this story, again by Jeff Sharlet, about Clinton’s own personal Jesus and religious references on the campaign trail, from Mother Jones:

Such references to spiritual warfare—prayer as battle against Satan, evil, and sin—might seem like heavy evangelical rhetoric for the senator from New York, but they went over well with the Sojourners audience, as did her call to “inject faith into policy.” It was language that recalled Clinton’s Jesus moment a year earlier, when she’d summoned the Bible to decry a Republican anti-immigrant initiative that she said would “criminalize the good Samaritan…and even Jesus himself.” Liberal Christians crowed (“Hillary Clinton Shows the Way Democrats Can Use the Bible,” declared a blogger at TPMCafe) while conservative pundits cried foul, accusing Clinton of scoring points with a faith not really her own.

In fact, Clinton’s God talk is more complicated—and more deeply rooted—than either fans or foes would have it, a revelation not just of her determination to out-Jesus the gop, but of the powerful religious strand in her own politics. Over the past year, we’ve interviewed dozens of Clinton’s friends, mentors, and pastors about her faith, her politics, and how each shapes the other. And while media reports tend to characterize Clinton’s subtle recalibration of tone and style as part of the Democrats’ broader move to recapture the terrain of “moral values,” those who know her say there’s far more to it than that.

Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection. “A lot of evangelicals would see that as just cynical exploitation,” says the Reverend Rob Schenck, a former leader of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue who now ministers to decision makers in Washington. “I don’t….there is a real good that is infected in people when they are around Jesus talk, and open Bibles, and prayer.”