Tony Campolo, professor of sociology at Eastern College in Pennsylvania, was recently appointed as pastoral counsellor to President Clinton.

Tony's statement follows. We encourage your views on this latest development. Do you think he is right to take on this role? Do you think he will be 'damned by association' with Bill Clinton? Is this a case of a manipulative President doing anything to restore credibility?

The following is a statement from Dr Tony Campolo, professor of sociology at Eastern College:

On Labor Day evening, President Clinton called me and asked me to serve in a pastoral role to counsel him and hold him accountable for his behavior. The Reverend Gordon MacDonald, senior pastor of Grace Chapel, Lexington, Massachusetts, was asked to share this responsibility with me. Both of us accepted the President's request for help.

At first, we hoped to keep our ministry to the President confidential, but because both the New York Times and the Boston Globe have published this information, we now feel it best to publicly explain our role in Mr Clinton's life.

At least one of us will meet with the President weekly. We will pray with him, study Scripture together, and do our best to help him as he searches his heart and soul. We want him to understand what went wrong with him personally that led to the tragic sins that have so marred his life and the office of the Presidency. We want to provide all the help that we can to spiritually strengthen him against yielding to the temptations that have conquered him in the past.

Please do not ask Gordon or me any political questions. Our responsibility and our desire is to rescue a fallen brother. We are instructed in Scripture (Galatians 6:1-2) that, 'If someone is overtaken in a fault, then those who are spiritual should restore such a one, in the spirit of gentleness, taking care that we ourselves do not fall into the same sins.' We are also told: 'to bear each other's burdens because that is one way to fulfill the law of Christ.' Gordon and I are committed to fulfilling this Biblical responsibility with the President.

Both of us were with the President and the First Lady prior to his confession and plea for forgiveness at the clergy prayer breakfast this past Friday. Both Gordon and I are convinced that what Mr Clinton said came from his heart and was absolutely sincere.

There are those who will say that Gordon and I are being used and manipulated. Should this be true, it would not be the first time that Christians have been taken in. But we would rather be men of faith who believe that God is working in the life of the President, than to join that army of cynics, many of whom are religious leaders, who cannot accept a plea for forgiveness at face value. We welcome the opportunity to take the risks that love and reconciliation require.

Be assured that we will not offer what the German martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, called 'cheap grace'. Cheap grace takes sin lightly and does not call for repentance and change. But neither do we come in a spirit of loveless condemnation, which would deny to the President the costly grace which we ourselves have received from God. What we want to see is that the good work which God initiated in the life of President Clinton this past Friday is carried through to fruition.

The President is a Baptist, and it is only fitting that he should call upon brothers in his own religious tradition to help him on his journey of faith in the days that lie ahead. Within our common faith commitment, Gordon and I will be reminding the President that he can trust in Jesus for salvation and be empowered by the Holy Spirit to conquer the demonic forces which have defeated him in the past.

Some of our evangelical brothers and sisters will criticize us for accepting this role. I am sorry about that, but both Gordon and I, after much prayer, consider it 'a calling'. I believe we are doing the right thing and that the President is doing the right thing.

Those of us who have known the President have had our severe critics. 'Why doesn't someone stand up and confront him?' has come the question more than once. 'Why haven't you played the role of the prophet, Nathan?' I can tell you firsthand that those times have happened. But having done that, we have chosen not to rush to the public or the press and disclose the content of conversations we consider private and personal.

I want to reiterate what Gordon told his congregation yesterday. There are some who have gone from the presence of the President and immediately used the occasion to flaunt their own notoriety before their constituencies. That is not the genuinely pastoral way. Some have demanded to know what has been said to the President as if they had some personal right. We have taken the position that these conversations are no one's business and will continue to do so.

Lorraine Hansberry's play, Raisin in the Sun, is the story of an African-American man who makes mistakes that destroy his family's hopes and dreams. When he confesses and asks for forgiveness, his sister, in great anger, screams at him and calls him despicable names.

The mother interrupts her to say, 'I thought I taught you to love him.'

The sister shouts back, 'Love him? There is nothing left to love.'

And then the mother says, 'There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him; what he's been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning – because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.'

I hope that those who criticize Gordon and me will themselves find a way to show something of that kind of loving grace to the President of the United States.'

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