Off
the shelf by Lynn McKeown
Ex-president's
view of Bush administration
Jimmy
Carter, Our Endangered Values; America's Moral Crisis, Simon & Schuster,
2005, $25.
Former President Jimmy Carter tells an interesting story
from his White House days in his new book Our Endangered Values. A long-time Southern
Baptist, believing himself to be a committed evangelical Christian, Carter was
having the customary meeting in the White House with a newly elected leader of
the Southern Baptist Convention. He expected it to be more or less routine. It was
pleasant enough, but at the end, just as the man was leaving, he asked the
president a question that set him back a bit. When, the man asked, would Carter
give up his "religion of secular humanism"?
Carter later found out that the man was part of a
fundamentalist faction that had taken control of the church over the objections
of moderate elements. In more recent times Carter has publicly broken with the
Southern Baptists, though he and his wife Rosalyn still teach Sunday school at
a church in his native Plains, Georgia — classes, he notes, which are
often visited by people of other Christian denominations and even other
religions.
The "values" Carter refers to are not the
"values" that "social conservatives" and "Christian
conservatives" like to talk about. He shares many of those values,
including an abhorrence of abortion. But this book is about some other values
that he believes the social conservatives ignore and which he as a Christian
feels are important, such as health care for those, including new mothers, who
may not have the financial means to afford it. "Many fervent pro-life
activists," he notes, "do not extend their concern to the baby who is
born, and are the least likely to support benevolent programs that they
consider 'socialistic.'"
Carter notes that there has been a split among
Christians in this country, and he finds himself at odds with what he calls
Christian "fundamentalism." He notes that this split includes an opposition between fundamentalists and
what has been called the "mainstream" churches, noting that Pat
Robertson once referred to Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists — generally
considered mainstream churches, at least in northern states — as
"the spirit of the Antichrist." (Robertson, of course, says many
things showing questionable judgment. He also recently suggested assassination
as a solution to U.S. problems with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.)
Though the book is mainly concerned with the
relationship of morality and government, Carter also takes aim at some policies
of Christian churches. In a chapter titled "Must Women Be
Subservient?" he discusses the negative attitude of some Christian fundamentalists
toward women, in spite of the high value placed on women in Jesus' teaching,
and especially criticizing leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, his own
former church, for the policy they have advocated in recent years of trying to limit
women to a "subservient" role.
In many other areas Carter sees the country, under
the current administration, while appearing to be guided by religion, to be
going in a direction not in keeping with basic Christian, Sermon-on-the-Mount
values. Though he doesn't often mention George W. Bush by name, Carter describes
many ways he feels the current administration has gone in questionable
directions.
In what he calls "an especially unpleasant
chapter to write," Carter discusses what he — and many others
— see as abuses of civil rights that have occurred under the auspices of
the U.S. government in the days after 9/11. He is especially aware of the
damage to the U.S. that has come about with revelations of abusive treatment of
prisoners in Abu Ghraib prisoners in Iraq and what he believes was lack of
respect for the human rights of prisoners in Guant‡namo, Cuba.
On many occasions in this book Carter notes the
ways in which the current administration has abandoned or reversed policies of
previous administrations over many years, including some policies of the first President
Bush. In environmental policy, nuclear weapons treaties, and embracing of preemptive
war — though he notes his own military past, and does not believe war is
immoral in all cases — the present administration has gone in a new and,
to Carter, often unwise and immoral direction. (One of his chapters is titled
"Worshiping the Prince of Peace, or Preemptive War?")
Some will see this book, without reading it, as
merely partisanship from a Democrat seeking advantage over a Republican
president. That would be a superficial view. In fact, many of Carter's
criticisms have been coming from other commentators for some time, including
some conservatives and Republicans. Carter had warned about the problems of the
administration's war plans in Iraq before the invasion began — now he has
been proven essentially correct.
This book is mainly about what Carter sees as a
number of poor federal government policies and actions, but he believes a mistaken
religious fundamentalism and its influence on government has been a part of
these problems. (One reviewer, in his description of Carter's grasp of
separation of church and state, noted that during his administration Carter,
though obviously a man of Christian convictions, didn't hold the White House
"prayer breakfasts" that many presidents have had as a demonstration
of their religiosity.) In a chapter called "The Entwining of Church and
State," Carter notes efforts of such religious leaders as Pat Robertson to
undermine separation of church and state, and even of Chief Justice Rehnquist,
who spoke of it as "a metaphor based on bad history."
Carter's position is that the First Amendment
creates a "historic wall between religion and government" that he
believes should be maintained. (In a recent television discussion, former
president Clinton noted that church attendance is higher in the U.S., where
there is separation of church and state, than it is in many European countries,
where church and state are more closely related — separation of church
and state are good for both government and religion.)
In some ways, the Bush administration is already,
in the face of many policy failures, going in a new direction. Under Secretary
of State Rice, the administration is attempting to mend fences with former
allies alienated by this country's "You're with us or against us" foreign
policy. The Neo-conservative doctrine of preemptive war and war to establish
democracy has been widely discredited. There's even some signs that the
evangelical Christians of George W. Bush's base may be having second thoughts
about his policies.
Ex-presidents are usually rather reluctant to get
involved in criticism of current administrations. Carter, in this book, doesn't
often mention George W. Bush by name. But the book is a strong and very
negative view of the policies of some clergymen and some politicians from one
who holds strongly to traditional religious and political values and finds both
being undermined by policies of the current administration.
This book is available at the Galesburg Public
Library.