Bible Studies

By David Van Biema/New York

Last week the Rev. JERRY FALWELL, writing in USA Today, counseled Bill Clinton to resign or ask public forgiveness. His grounds: Scripture bids the leader, "Flee from all appearances of evil," and standards are "immensely higher for those who invoke the name of Christ, as Bill Clinton does." Falwell, however, may have a first-stone problem. In the Web magazine Salon, reporter MURRAY WAAS writes that a group called Citizens for Honest Government paid more than $200,000 to people who accused Clinton of such crimes as aiding an Arkansas cocaine ring. CHG folded those allegations, and worse, into its 1994 Clinton-hater tape The Clinton Chronicles. Falwell sold 60,000 of those tapes on television. CHG head PATRICK MATRISCIANA backs Falwell's claim that he didn't know of the payments, which Matrisciana says totaled closer to $100,000 and were made mostly to "researchers" or Clinton denouncers who have fallen on hard times. But while Matrisciana stands by many of the tape's allegations, Falwell is more equivocal. In 1994, says a spokesman, he thought, "Even if most of this is untrue, it deserves a second look." Does he now believe anything on it was true? "I'm not sure he could say." Rumormongering is a step away from the biblically prohibited bearing of false witness, but, as Falwell argues, standards for leaders who invoke Christ's name are higher.

--By David Van Biema/New York