Religion & Politics is running a piece by Randall Balmer describing a Sunday he spent with Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter while conducting research for his new book Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter. Here is a taste:
In the course of our interview in the pastor’s study, after church and photographs on the side lawn, Carter declared himself “honored” to be numbered among such progressive evangelicals as Charles Grandison Finney and William Jennings Bryan. Mark Hatfield, he said, “was a kind of hero of mine.” Carter characterized Hatfield as “a genuinely devout believer in Christ who sought to put Christ’s teachings into practice.” Carter also acknowledged that his own defeat in 1980 followed by Hatfield’s retirement from the Senate in 1997 had left a void, at least among elected officials. Carter lamented the “new definition” of evangelicalism that had taken hold, one associated with “rightwing Christianity.” He recalled hearing about Jerry Falwell “giving me a hard time” in 1976, but his was just a lonely voice at the time; Falwell and his associates, however, “had remarkable success in four years in making that a driving force in American political history.” When did the president have a sense of the gathering storm as he prepared for reelection? Carter remembered that his sister, Ruth Carter Stapleton, “told me that there was a stirring of animosity toward me because of some of the moderate positions I had taken on human rights and so forth and that they thought I had betrayed their own definition of Christianity. But I didn’t really see it as a serious thing until the altercation arose in the Southern Baptist Convention.” After the conservative takeover in 1979, he said, he began to recognize the ramifications of the evangelical shift away from progressive evangelicalism.
See our interview with Balmer here. For more coverage of the book at The Way of Improvement Leads Home click here and here.
Randall Balmer Spends an Afternoon With Jimmy Carter
John, we're kidding here with this, right? Brother Balmer uncritically interviewing excruciatingly incompetent President Jimmy Carter?
“…a stirring of animosity toward me because of some of the moderate positions I had taken on human rights and so forth and that they thought I had betrayed their own definition of Christianity…”
Uh huh.
After the conservative takeover in 1979, he said, he began to recognize the ramifications of the evangelical shift away from progressive evangelicalism.
The “conservative takeover” of the GOP followed as a reaction to the McGovernite takeover of the Democratic Party that started in 1972.
Bill Clinton was pretty much the last Democrat “centrist.” And it cost the Dems their hstoric control of Congress from 1994-2006.
It looks something like this, John:
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass/2014/06/12/the-three-liberal-myths-about-partisanship-busted-by-pews-new-poll-n1850762
Your call, bro.
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