Jimmy Carter on American values

Thanks to the miracle of Amazon One-Click, I now have Jimmy Carter's new book Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis in front of me. It's not all targeted at the Christian Right, despite the rumor mill.

But he does harsh on the fundis pretty good. He explains that his longtime understanding of Christian fundamentalism was that it involved adherence to principles believed to be unchanging. This respect for Chrisitan tradition, he writes, "is an understandable and benign aspect of religion".

But the fundis of the Christian Right made him think about the phenomenon more deeply. The main characteristics of this "more intense form" of Christian fundamentalism he describes as follows:

* Almost invariably, fundamentalist movements are led by authoritarian males who consider themselves to be superior to others and, within religious groups, have an overwhelming commitment to subjugate women and to dominate their fellow believers.

* Although fundamentalists usually believe that the past is better than the present, they retain certain self-beneficial aspects of both their historic religious beliefs and of the modern world.


* Fundamentalists draw clear distinction between themselves, as true believers, and others, convinced that they are right and that anyone who contradicts them is ignorant and possibly evil.

* Fundamentalists are militant in fighting against any challenge to their beliefs. They are often angry and sometimes resort to verbal or even physical abuse against those who interfere with the implementation of their agenda. [my emphasis]

* Fundamentalists tend to make their self-definition increasingly narrow and restricted, to isolate themselves, to demagogue emotional issues, and to view change, cooperation, negotiation, and other efforts to resolve differences as signs of weakness.

No, the fundis aren't likely to be thrilled about Carter's book. He even gives us a short version of the distinguishing characteristics of the Christian Right brand of fundamentalism: "rigidity, domination, and exclusion".

The following may be questionable as far as the historical Jesus. But it's appealing theology, and a reminder that "evangelical" (conservative Protestant) theology does not have to be synonomous with rejection of women's equality:

Despite the fact that Jesus Christ was the greatest liberator of women, some male leaders of the Christian faith have continued the unwarranted practice of sexual discrimination, derogating women and depriving them of the equal rights to serve God. This same insistence on the submission of wives to husbands and the branding of women as inferior has also been adopted in some Islamic nations. It is inevitable that this sustained religious subjugation has been a major influence in depriving women of basic rights within the worldwide secular community.

He follows this by observing that the Biblical notions of marriage and family were influenced by social practices at the times the Scriptures were written down.

Discussing the increasingly obscurantist and militant posture of fundamentalists in the Southern Baptist denomination, with which he was once identified (he's now part of a more moderate split-off of the Southern Baptists) he writes:

This focus on events within my own religious denomination may not be especially interesting to some readers, but it has had a profound impact on every American citizen through similar and related changes being wrought in our nation's political system. During the last quarter century, there has been a parallel right-wing movement within American politics, often directly tied to the attribues of like-minded Christian groups. The revolutionary new political principles involve special favors for the powerful at the expense of others, abandonment of social justice, denigration of those who differ, failure to protect the environment, attempts to exclude those who refuse to conform, a tendency toward unilateral diplomatic actions and away from international agreements, an excessive inclination toward conflict, and reliance on fear as a means of persuasion.(my emphasis)

And they say liberals don't know how to talk about religion!

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