The deeply Methodist Hillary Clinton

The American political scene is pockmarked by division and disagreement, but it seems incontestable that the public figure who has been most reviled and vilified over the past half century is Hillary Rodham Clinton. As Gary Scott Smith records in this remarkable biography, Clinton has been accused of all manner of chicanery and criminality, including murder. “She has been mocked as a witch, a bitch, a feminazi, a slut, a daughter of Satan, a whore, a castrating ball-breaker, and a Marxist,” Smith writes.

That endless stream of vitriol, especially the references to Satan and demons, is incongruent with the portrait that Smith provides in Do All the Good You Can. Smith is by no means uncritical. He’s quick to acknowledge Clinton’s occasional eliding of the truth, and he doesn’t hesitate to point out the inconsistency of an advocate for the poor seeking riches for herself. Yet he demonstrates throughout the book that “Clinton’s faith is more deeply rooted and fervent than many supporters, opponents, pundits, and biographers have recognized.”

Methodism, Smith argues, lies at the very core of Clinton’s identity, an observation corroborated by friends, colleagues, even critics—and by Clinton herself. When she joined the youth group at First Methodist Church in Park Ridge, Illinois, as a child, she came into contact with Don Jones, a Drew University graduate and youth pastor, who introduced her to the social gospel. She soon found herself struggling to reconcile her enhanced understanding of the faith with her political identity as a “Goldwater girl.”