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.