G. Frink's

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said today in an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that "she would have left her church" if her pastor made inflammatory remarks like those made the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

She tried to wrap it in a politically convenient homily about choices Sen. Barack Obama might have made regarding whether to continue to attend Trinity United Church of Christ while Wright was pastor.

She said:

He would not have been my pastor. You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.

How morally remote from real life, in which her declaration still means she would walk out on her church community if the pastor currently assigned to her home pulpit offended her.

It is as though she doesn't understand either the nature of church membership or its obligations. As the editor of the Biblical Recorder put it in his blog:

Church membership isn't just about a particular minister and his sermons. It's about a community. ... Your church, especially in our transient society, is your family. The persons in your Sunday school class or cell group are likely those you hang out with or call when you have a free evening and want to do something with a friend. Your children's friends are there. You make connections that carry into your everyday working world. These are the people who rally to your needs.

Unless you're Hillary Clinton, who at the pastoral utterance of sufficiently offensive words would abandon all of those fellow church members with whom she had developed relationships of Christian fellowship and mutual spiritual support.

If I ever trusted her about anything important, I don't now.