Jimmy Carter's New Book

Currently I am reading Jimmy Carter's new book titled Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (Simon and Schuster, 2005). I'm still in the midst of it, but I am impressed so far.

Among other things, Carter discusses his decision to disassociate himself from his former denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. Carter is still a Baptist, I gather, and still teaches Sunday School as he did since before (and during) his presidency. The reason Carter left the SBC boils down to the Fundamentalist takeover of that denomination. Apparently among the last straws for Carter were the adoption of a faith statement (or creed?) by the denomination that called for the submission of wives to their husbands and the barring of women from being pastors. Carter also views the imposition of creeds by denominations on local congregations and individual members as running counter to Baptist traditions of individual liberty and the autonomy of congregations.

Brevity requires me to put off getting very far into Carter's views of our political scene, but suffice it to say that Carter sees a big problem with the intrusion into America's political life of the same Fundamentalism that took over the SBC. He discusses, for instance, how the ideas presented in the popular Tim LaHaye "Left Behind" book series based upon pre-millennial dispensationalism and belief in the rapture now influences U.S. policy in the middle east and helped get us into the war in Iraq. This is all part of the "moral crisis" in which Carter sees the U.S.

Of course, Carter went to press before the Rev. Pat Robertson declared to the world that he sees God's hand in the stroke suffered by Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister. Surely, Carter would find this an example of the ugly moral tone which Fundamentalism is setting in our nation.