The Ex-President Preacher

Reading on the walk home from work: I have often said that the best man to hold the office of President of the United States in my lifetime was also the worst President. He was Jimmy Carter. He's apparently got a new book out: Our Endangered Values. It will only be read by those who already agree with him. His has been a politically impotent voice for some years, however inspiring. The para below is from a review of the book: Jimmy Carter & The Culture of Death, from the New Yorker. Carter, a Baptist Minister in addition to being an ex-President, comments in the book about the brand of fundamentalism that has gained so much political power in recent years. The marks of this new fundamentalism, according to Carter, are rigidity, self-righteousness, and an eagerness to use compulsion (including political compulsion). Its spokesmen are contemptuous of all who do not agree with them one hundred percent. Pat Robertson, on his 700 Club, typified the new "popes" when he proclaimed: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist." Carter got a firsthand taste of such intolerance when the president of the Southern Baptist Convention visited him in the White House to tell him, "We are praying, Mr. President, that you will abandon secular humanism as your religion." ..