Seminary Journal 2008 (August) - Virginia Theological Seminary

Good morning.
Separation of church and state
has never really worked for me. I have
covered the White House and politics
in this town since 1974. Even the choice
of which church I attended in Washington
was governed in great part by
the fact that I was covering the White
House.
When I joined the ABC News
team, as the junior one I had to work
weekends. I would spend every Sunday
morning at eleven o’clock in the
last row at St. John’s Church, Lafayette
Square, where President Ford would
go to church every week. I was the
weekend reporter who had to travel
with him.
We would be seated in the last
row on the left-hand side next to the
White House doctor and the White
House military aide, who carried the
football with the nuclear codes in it.
Every week I would sit there in the
back row of St. John’s. A couple of
years later, when I met Bill Hughes
and we decided to get married, I went
to my friend John Harper, the legendary
rector of St. John’s. He said fi ne,
and St. John’s has been home for us,
for our family, since that time.
The fi rst Sunday after I’d gone
to see John, Bill and I showed up for
The Virginia Seminary Forum on Faith, Work & Vocation
We are called into being by God, and our vocation is to be God’s in all that we are and do. Faith and vocation are
centered in worship, but they are lived out in the workplace. Since 1994, Virginia Seminary has offered a series
of forums for laypersons living or working in the Washington area, and gathers these persons together with
speakers whose insights into Faith, Work, and Vocation may help inform our own lives.
February 27, 2007
Ann Compton
ABC News White House Correspondent
Ann Compton has covered six presidents during her distinguished career and has served as a panelist for presidential debates.
While she is the recipient of numerous journalism awards, the recognition she treasures most is from the National Mothers
Day Committee, which named her Mother of the Year in 1988.
the eleven o’clock service, forgetting it
was the end of Daylight Savings Time.
So we got there at ten, and our punishment
was we got to carry the elements
down for Communion an hour later.
And we have been hooked ever since.
St. John’s has been a wonderful
place. They had a big baby boom
and the nursery used to just overfl ow
with kids, so one mother would be
volunteer mother-of-the-week up in the
nursery with the professional staff. We
had six cribs going.
We always have a live baby
Jesus on Christmas Eve. My youngest,
Michael, made it a speaking part his
year! My oldest, Bill, who was very
reluctant to participate in the pageant,
one year was asked if he would be the
shepherd who would help lead a big
stuffed camel down the aisle. There
were two parishioners inside the camel,
both very, very tall. Billy was told,
“As you come down the aisle, pretend
that you really have to pull this camel
hard. This camel does not want to go
up to the front of the church.” And so
Billy was really acting, but with one
good jerk on the way down the aisle,
the head came off the camel. I said,
“That’s it! When I write my memoirs,
the title is: And Then the Head Came Off
the Camel.”
I am always impressed that
St. John’s is known as a “neighborhood
church,” because really there’s
only one person who lives in the
neighborhood, and that’s the president.
It may be very true that every
president since Madison, I think, has
worshipped at least once or twice at
St. John’s. The rest of us come some
distances to go there.
My second president was a determined
Baptist. Jimmy Carter went
up Connecticut Avenue to the O Street
Baptist Church every week.
The tour buses in Washington
would pull up in front of the church
at about ten minutes before ten every
Sunday morning and disgorge dozens
of tourists who would fi ll up the balcony
so they could see the President
of the United States teaching Sunday
School. I went occasionally when I
was a reporter, but I didn’t go as a
regular basis.
One Saturday night, I was
sitting at home in Georgetown with
my beloved college roommate who
had come to visit for the weekend.
The phone rang. It was Fred Greg, the
fellow at the O Street Baptist Church
who ran the Sunday School. He said, “I
bet right now you’re asking yourself, ‘I
wonder what the lesson is for tomor-
88 VIRGINIA SEMINARY JOURNAL AUGUST 2007