Jimmy Carter has been an amazing writer since leaving the White House. He has written 23 books and I have just finished Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis and found his writing a calming voice in today’s ridiculous world of news bites and aggressive internal rhetoric our “mainstream” news reporting.
I found Carter’s book similar in nature to Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason (review here) in finding a calming, rational leader who is looking to re-establish America’s global leadership through the core values our country was founded upon.
Carter simply lays out his personal, Christian and Presidential arguments for positive leadership reaching from Washington to a global audience.
The opening chapters focus on America’s traditional beliefs, Carter’s own traditional Christian faith, the rise of religious fundamentalism and the growing conflicts among religious people. He accurately addressed the entwining of Church and State from 1970 to 9/11.
Carter also challenges traditional religious organizations in the South. The issues of divorce, homosexuality, abortion and the death penalty. These are emotional issues that reinforce many voters’ shift to the GOP and the Southern Baptist Convention.
An issue that continues to restrain Baptist and GOP leaders is the role of Subservient women in their church. This issue eventually lead to Carter’s exit from the Southern Baptist Convention.
It was interesting to see how his religious upbringing and service to our country as a navy submarine officer shaped his military, global and Presidential views. Stories of positions on nuclear weapons, the aggressive Soviet Union and China along with the early movement in our country toward a safe environment are all reviewed with great detail. He remains our country’s elder statesman with good reason stitched into the binding of his book.
Tags: Jimmy Carter, Our Endangered Values, reason, politics, reading, moral crisis, values, America, , religious fundamentalism, southern baptist convention, traditional beliefs, traditional christian faith, trends