Jimmy Carter's Endangered Values
Albert Mohler
Author, Speaker, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Monday, November 7, 2005

Former president Jimmy Carter has written yet another book -- his twentieth -- and he has hit the media circuit in order to promote his latest project. Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis represents the former president's return to familiar themes, even as it will add new layers of confusion concerning his actual beliefs and values.

Jimmy Carter makes one central argument in this new book, and that is that America (indeed civilization itself) is under attack by a sinister force. In effect, he argues that a new specter now haunts civilization -- the specter of Christian fundamentalism.

After tracing a series of crises faced by the United States and the larger world, Mr. Carter places the blame squarely upon conservative Christians: "The most important factor is that fundamentalists have become increasingly influential in both religion and government, and have managed to change the nuances and subtleties of historic debate into black-and-white rigidities and the personal derogation of those who dare to disagree. At the same time, these religious and political conservatives have melded their efforts, bridging the formerly respected separation of church and state." That's quite an argument, but those familiar with Jimmy Carter's mode of public engagement will understand that this is merely the expansion (and repetition) of what the former president has been saying ever since the American people denied him a second term in the Oval Office. The rest