By Bob Allen
A Southern Baptist seminary president urged Christians – regardless of their political persuasion – to pray for the recovery of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, hospitalized Sunday for a potentially life-threatening blood clot near her brain.
“The Scripture reminds us that we are to pray for those in authority over us, and Christians need to be praying right now – Christians in the United States in particular – for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton,” Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said in a podcast commentary Jan. 2.
Mohler, 53, survived a similar medical scare six years ago, when he was treated in intensive care for complications from abdominal surgery.
“As one who himself has had multiple blood clots that have gone to my lungs, these things are often fatal,” Mohler said. “In the case of Secretary Clinton, we need to be very thankful that it was not fatal and that there’s a good likelihood she is receiving the kind of medical attention that will bring her to recovery.”
Mohler described both Clinton, 65, the most-traveled U.S. secretary of state in history and presumptive Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as two “of the most controversial figures in American politics, but controversial or not, she’s a human being who needs our prayers.”
“What we’re looking at here is undeniably a very significant and legitimate medical crisis, and it comes at a very hot and tense political time,” Mohler said. “But we need to remember — and Christians should be the first to remember — that when we talk about anyone like this we’re talking about a very real human being, who inhabits a human body just like the rest of us and faces mortality and medical crises just like the rest of us.”