Reverend Dr. Bill Shillady, who served as a spiritual mentor to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, has penned a new book titled Strong for a Moment Like This: The Daily Devotions of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
According to Amazon, the book will feature “365 of the more than 600 devotions written for Secretary Clinton” during her campaign for president, “along with personal notes, portions of her speeches, and headlines that provide context for that day’s devotion.”
Clinton herself wrote the foreword to the “inspirational” book, which she encouraged Shillady to write.
In a lengthy piece for The Atlantic, Emma Green wrote about Clinton’s “secret dream” of ministry:
Hillary Clinton wants to preach. That’s what she told Bill Shillady, her longtime pastor, at a recent photo shoot for his new book about the daily devotionals he sent her during the 2016 campaign. Scattered bits of reporting suggest that ministry has always been a secret dream of the two-time presidential candidate: 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.
Green goes on to mention Clinton’s Methodist upbringing, her fear of revealing her faith publicly as a politician, and the backlash to her 1993 “Crisis of Meaning” speech.
Regarding the notion that Clinton may have a desire to stand behind the pulpit, Shillady told Green: “Given her depth of knowledge of the Bible and her experience of caring for people and loving people, she’d make a great pastor.”
According to Shillady, it’s unlikely that Clinton would move into ministry on a full-time basis, but suggested “guest preaching at some point.” He added: “We have a long history of lay preachers in the United Methodist Church.”
In other news, Cecile Richards is preparing to leave her position as the head of Planned Parenthood to become a neonatal nurse; Senator Bernie Sanders was just hired as the head of Bain Capital; and former President Bill Clinton has decided to become a counselor for survivors of sexual assault.