America’s Moral Crisis

Jimmy Carter’s presidency of the late ’70s predated me, so I can’t have much opinion on him as President beyond what I’ve learned as history. I knew he was a Southern Baptist and that he struggled with a number of major problems during his tenure, like the oil embargo and the hostage crisis in Iran. As far as I can tell, History doesn’t remember his presidency too favorably (I could be wrong, but I think that the skinny white President in the TV show 24 was supposed to be a caricature of Carter). Still, the man has persisted in his role as a statesman since that time, and it seems that he has been way more successful as a former-President than he had ever been as President.

The Carter Foundation is one that pursues peaceful diplomacy on a global scale, and Carter has served a number of Presidents since his unseating as an unofficial delegate for peace. He has written many books over the decades, and an audio version of Our Endangered Values from 2005 just happened to fall in my lap last week, so I devoured it pretty quickly.

The major tenets of this book—published at the beginning of George W. Bush‘s second term—are that ultra-Right-wing Conservatives and fundamentalist Christians pose a major threat to the moral fabric of the United States. Yes, you read that correctly. As a life-long follower of Jesus, Carter feels it imperative to detail why he believes this is the case by dedicating his first several chapters to the dangers of religious fundamentalism. And he doesn’t mince words.

Now, I’ve mentioned before that I am (for lack of a better term) a fundamentalist, at least if you define “fundamentalism” apart from all it’s connotative baggage: I believe in the inerrant Word of God and that it ought to be the guide and standard for every believer’s faith and practice. Sure, there have been plenty of “fundamentalists” that have brought shame to the title, cowards and self-loving egoists who through their own hypocrisy have made me embarrassed to call myself a fundamentalist at all (which is why I’m always on the lookout for a better tag). But I find that Carter’s descriptions of fundamentalists in this book are broad, consistently negative, unrecognizable, and therefore an unfair representation of the Conservative followers of Christ that I know. In fact, I would have to say that the most pervasively annoying aspect of this book is Carter’s word choice throughout.

He calls fundamentalists, for example, “tedious,” “marginal,” and “rigid,” bent on “domination” and “exclusion.” He calls us “divisive,” “disturbing,” and he “deplores” our affiliation with politics. I know that this was written fifteen years ago, and the America of 2020 is something special indeed, but can you imagine anytime in American history where Conservative Christians are America’s most dangerous enemies of freedom? I read the entire book, and it’s still such a mind-boggling proposition that I find it a bit hard to grasp.

Some topics that Carter pinpoints where fundamentalist thinking threatens the life our very Constitution include “the subjugation of women” (a twisted way to describe Pauline theology if I’ve ever heard one!), the “sins of divorce and homosexuality,” abortion and capital punishment, foreign policy, and the environment. Some of these issues were genuinely thought-provoking, and others made it seem like Carter’s nothing more than a petulant has-been trying to keep relevant with the newest form of group-think.

He describes at length, for example, how the SBC’s treatment of women was the final straw and the reason that he and Roselyn left the church after 70 years of partnership. While I have my own qualms about how Christians have distorted the Bible’s teachings concerning women over the past bunch of centuries, I cannot believe that the non-ordination of women into ministry remains a threat to the moral fabric of the nation, and I certainly can’t understand how the verb “subjugation” accurately reflects the church’s treatment of women. In this portion of the book alone, Carter shows his hand too openly: he’s got an axe to grind, and he’s willing to abuse his platform to make sure he gets in the final word.

His chapter on Abortion and Capital Punishment, on the other hand, was thought-provoking if not entirely convincing. I was challenged by the NT passages he shared on the issue of capital punishment, and I appreciated his line that said, “Every abortion is an unplanned tragedy.” Yet he harps on President Bush for denying the use of new stem cells for research, suggesting that “so many more people are going to die, because we’re not taking advantage of these cells that will inevitably become available, since abortion remains legal (even though it shouldn’t be legal).” [That’s a paraphrase.] This logic is the same as saying, “Hey, everyone’s looting anyways, and grandma might need this medicine someday. So I’m just going to take it now and hopefully save her life.” He lays the deaths of future cancer sufferers at the feet of President Bush, because Bush isn’t willing to steal cells from murdered babies. What a moral quagmire!

The above example is just one of the many in this book that suggest Carter’s acceptance of Normative Ethics, the idea that society determines morality. “If the majority of Americans believe that abortion is right, or that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle, or that climate change will destroy the earth by 2030, then it must be true.” [Again, a paraphrase.] This philosophy to which Jimmy Carter clings is the very reason why he hates the fundamentalists, why he left the SBC, and why he’s willing to change with every tide of secular American thinking: he does not believe that the Word of God is as infallible today as it was when originally written. This is the exact premise of my most recent book review, The New Evangelicalism, and hopefully the discerning reader can recognize the threat that Liberal Theology poses to the fabric of our nation.

Are our values endangered? Absolutely they are, but not for the reasons President Carter suggests. The further our nations, its churches, and its followers of Christ move from the inerrant Word of God, the more deplorable our “morality” will become. Our ethics, our values, and our very future are endangered by this departure from the Word of Christ, and I guess for that illuminating reason, I’m thankful for this book. Otherwise? Eesh. Don’t waste your time.

©2020 E.T.