Product Description

President Jimmy Carter offers a passionate defense of separation of church and state. He warns that fundamentalists are deliberately blurring the lines between politics and religion.

As a believing Christian, Carter takes on issues that are under fierce debate -- women's rights, terrorism, homosexuality, civil liberties, abortion, the death penalty, science and religion, environmental degradation, nuclear arsenals, preemptive war, and America's global image.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68570 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780743285018
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
Even at his most irate, Jimmy Carter projects cool, communicating with a poise that commands attention while gently signaling to opponents that they better do their homework before mounting any sort of debate. Perhaps that's why the former president, Nobel Peace Prize-winner, and bestselling author ranks as one of the planet's most respected voices in the areas of human rights, diplomacy, and good government. And when a clearly agitated Carter suggests America is on a slippery slope, globally speaking, as he does throughout Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis, it's wise to pay heed even if the book's overriding Christian perspective may trip cautionary bells in secular readers.

More a set of loosely connected essays than a single, precise argument, Our Endangered Values outlines Carter's worldview while pondering what he posits are key problems looming in the 21st century. Thematic touchstones such as the war, environmental negligence, civil liberties, the rich-poor divide, and the separation of church and state form the book's backbone, with Carter filtering each through the prism of his own vast experience. He doesn't much like what he sees. Though much of the data Carter presents to support his arguments is familiar, it's worth repeating that "the rate of firearm homicides in the United States is nineteen times higher than that of 35 other high-income countries combined." That "In addition to imprisonment, the United States of America stands almost alone in the world in our fascination with the death penalty, and our few remaining companions are regimes with a lack of respect for basic human rights." That when it comes to sharing the wealth with poor nations "Americans are the stingiest of all industrialized nations. We allow about one-thirtieth as much as is commonly believed [or] sixteen cents out of each $100 of the gross national income." America: land of the free, home of the brave? Try global bully with a bad attitude and reckless sense of entitlement.

Carter spends significant time contextualizing his own spirituality, as if to underscore the urgency of his message that fundamentalism in any form is bad, especially when it encroaches on government. Indeed, Carter persuasively links fundamentalism to harmful policy, the subjugation of women, general xenophobia, and a host of other ills occurring all around him. And while George W. Bush in particular and the current administration in general take fewer clips on the chin than might be expected, Carter's arguments for common-sense change are deeply resonant nonetheless. --Kim Hughes

From Publishers Weekly
After several books on spirituality and homespun values (most recently Sharing Good Times), President Carter turns his attention to the political arena. He is gravely concerned by recent trends in conservatism, many of which, he argues, stem from the religious right's openly political agenda. Criticizing Christian fundamentalists for their "rigidity, domination and exclusion," he suggests that their open hostility toward a range of sinners (including homosexuals and the federal judiciary) runs counter to America's legacy of democratic freedom. Carter speaks eloquently of how his own faith has shaped his moral vision and of how he has struggled to reconcile his own values with the Southern Baptist church's transformation under increasingly conservative leadership. He also makes resonant connections between religion and political activism, as when he points out that the Lord's Prayer is a call for "an end to political and economic injustice within worldly regimes." Too much of the book, however, is a scattershot catalogue of standard liberal gripes against the current administration. Throwing in everything from human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib to global warming, Carter spreads himself too thin over talking points that have already been covered extensively.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Evangelical Christians in this country are familiar with the jeremiad, a sermon rousing the devout to renewed effort by highlighting how far they have wandered from the true and only faith. These days, jeremiads invariably attribute the abysmal crisis in which America allegedly finds itself to liberals and secular humanists. Teenage pregnancy, abortion, drug addiction, homosexuality -- these, we are told, are indications of our fallen state, the product of our mistaken belief that we can get by without the teachings of a just God.

Jimmy Carter's natural affinity is with the jeremiad. But Our Endangered Values, the prolific ex-president's latest book, finds fault not with secular humanists but with Christians, particularly those of the fundamentalist persuasion. Huge gaps between rich and poor, disrespect for human rights, cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners, a despoiled environment and a dangerous foreign policy -- these, for him, are the true indications of how far we have fallen. We used to believe that America stood as a moral beacon to the world. Because of the influence wielded by fundamentalists over our policies, Carter argues, we no longer can.

Carter offers an unusual combination: a man of faith and a man of power. His presidency was marked both by his prophetic witness on behalf of humane values and by his often incomprehensible amateurism in campaigning and governing. No wonder, then, that the best parts of Our Endangered Values deal with his private faith and the worst with his analysis of public policy.

To understand Carter's beliefs, it is important to know something about America's largest Protestant denomination, the Baptists. Baptists have long insisted on the separation of church and state, distrusted religious hierarchies and respected the autonomy of local congregations. The 2000 "Baptist Faith and Message" statement, according to Carter, changed all that; with it, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) created a church that would directly involve itself in politics, made half its members (the female half) subservient and, in Carter's devastating words, brought about the "substitution of Southern Baptist leaders for Jesus as the interpreters of biblical Scripture." Carter may have left the SBC in protest, but he, far more than the ostensible leaders of the denomination, represents the true spirit of Baptist religious liberty.

As president, Carter prayed, and prayed often -- not to ask divine blessing for actions he was about to take but because any action he took would have consequences unknown to him or any other human being. His personal convictions led him to oppose both abortion and the death penalty, but his political duty commanded obedience to the decisions of the Supreme Court. Fundamentalism, Carter writes, has three attributes: "rigidity, domination, and exclusion." As a president and as a Christian, Carter avoided all three.

Now that many of the Christian fundamentalists with whom Carter so strongly disagrees find themselves being courted by the White House (even if their advice is frequently ignored), Carter's criticism of their understanding of religion in politics is as welcome as it is refreshing. Still, there are times when the Jesus talk gets laid on a bit too thick. It is true that fundamentalist Christians have retrograde views about women, but to write in response that "Jesus Christ was the greatest liberator of women" downplays the role that Christianity played for centuries in assigning women to second-class status. Nor is it always an effective tactic to criticize biblical literalists by citing the Bible against them, as Carter does on behalf of the poor; after all, the Bible so frequently contradicts itself.

Sometimes, in other words, you need a nonreligious argument to confront the theocrats among us. Carter is perfectly aware of this, and when he turns to questions involving the environment or counterterrorism, his wonkish side comes to the fore. Alas, Carter's voice without prophetic urgency is more obligatory than compelling. It is true that nuclear proliferation is a great danger and that the United States is well-served by a strong United Nations, but Carter's breathless rush through the damage wrecked by foreign policy unilateralism offers little that is new and much that is labored.

His deep religious convictions ought especially to inform his policy discussions on the subject of torture of detainees held abroad. Yet here his prose, too vague to be analytic, is also too detached to be prophetic. Prophecy demands holding people who do bad things responsible for their actions. Yet while Carter clearly does not like what Republicans are doing, President George W. Bush does not appear in his book. Neoconservatives do: Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is mentioned a couple of times, and Pat Robertson gets his share of attention. Probably out of respect for the office he once held, Carter is reluctant to point the finger of blame at the man who holds it now. One can admire him for his restraint even while lamenting the dispassion that results.

Fundamentalism has gotten America into a mess, but religion can once again help the country finds its soul. The Republican version of Jimmy Carter, former Missouri senator John Danforth, started an important national discussion when he criticized right-wing extremists in his party for their certainty that God was on their side. By adding his own voice to the discussion, Carter reminds us of a time when religion was tied to such virtues as humility and to such practices as soul-searching. He may not have been one of our best presidents, but he is undoubtedly one of our finest human beings.

Reviewed by Alan Wolfe
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

A book all Americans should read
I have found this to be a most honest and direct evaluation of the current national situation. It is an easy book to read and demonstrates the unusual honesty of Jimmy Carter as a past president and current world humanitarian. His evaluation of the current administration's shortcomings and intrigue in its selling of the Iraq war to the American public and Congress is most interesting and enlightening. He substantiates his concern for the other detrimental actions of the present administartion throudh his own religeous beliefs and gives an explanation of his separation from the Southern Baptist Convention.

A must-read for all who care about America's future
From one who has been there and who sees things with eyes of a follower of Christ, here is the best account I have seen of the slide America is in away from our position of once proud nation, moral leader of the world, and protector of the disadvantaged. He places this slide not so much on inept leadership (and no president is perfect) but on a conscious, calculated move toward more advantages for the very rich. The numbers tell the story and he supplies enough of them to make this a very scary work of non-fiction. Of course, being a Christian, he gives a ray of hope at the end. But no quick fixes.

In general, I think it is well-written and much more readable than some of his earlier books. The problem is stated, the gauntlet thrown down. Maybe it is for the next generation to take up the challenge.

Personal, Christian, and emotional arguments for tolerance
In reading the book, I was reminded of the saying that people don't remember what you said. They remember how you made them feel. In this Carter succeeds. That said, don't pick up a copy of the book expecting to find well reasoned positions backed with unambigous references to reliable data and statistics.

In "Our Endangered Values", Carter describes a set of American values: equality, liberty, justice for all, individual empowerment, inclusion, generosity, forgiveness, and leadership by example. This is framed by a narrative which is personal and focused on people finding common ground on which to build a better tomorrow.

These values are then contrasted against what is described as a general trend toward fundamentalism. The fundamentalism Carter argues against is not the adherance to a literal interpretation of secular texts, but the practice of intolerance regarding people of differing beliefs.

Intolerance, he argues, becomes particularly dangerous where people choose to recognize their leaders and institutions as masters rather than servants. Such leaders and their institutions tend to combine their beliefs and intolerance into agendas which exclude, dehumanize and punish.

From there, it is just a hop, a skip, and a jump to a laundry list of ways in which the actions of recent administrations and highly visible religious leaders are tipping the balance toward fundamentalism and endangering the values he holds dear.

In summary, it is well worth reading, and is relatively light reading at that. Some reviewers have come down fairly harshly on the book for religious and/or political grounds. I think they miss the point. Carter isn't mandating that you subscribe to his beliefs. He is asking you to look for common ground and tolerate the differences.