Mother Jones has an interview with Jimmy Carter in which Carter talks about the intersection of religious and political fundamentalism that has corrupted the country.
http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2006/06/jimmy_carter.html
They are talking about Carter’s newest book Our Endangered Values. The interview is worth the read, as is the book. In the interview Carter identifies 1979 as the time of origin of this Faustian bargain on the Right.
I think it was in 1979, when future fundamentalists took control of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is a very important religious and political factor in this country. After that, the Southern Baptist Convention had almost diametrically opposite basic principles than it had previously followed, and there’s been an evolution within the Convention toward a more and more rigid and strict creed that embodies the fundamentalist principles that I mention in the book.
Now, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the elementary principle of fundamentalism has existed for ages, and it obviously permeates other religions as well, such as Islam and Hinduism and others. But this trend continued and, parallel to it, there was in effect a merger of the fundamentalist Christian leaders and the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. And for the last 25 years or so, that merger has become more pronounced and more evident.
MJ.com: Which of the two strains of fundamentalism do you see as leading the other?
JC: I wouldn’t say leading, but both are influencing each other. In the past, there have been two parallel premises for the separation of church and state. One obviously is what Thomas Jefferson declared, stating that he was speaking on behalf of the other founding fathers, when he said we should build a wall between the church and state. And in the Christian faith, we all remember that Christ said, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” This also indicates that there should be a clear separation.
But those premises have been publicly disavowed or challenged by Pat Robertson on the religious side, and even by the former chief justice of the Supreme Court [William Rehnquist]. But nowadays, with the allocation of billions of dollars through what President Bush calls a faith-based initiative, taxpayers’ money is distributed to churches and other religious institutions that will comply with the basic principles of the present political administration. And there’s no doubt that in public conventions and in individual church speeches and sermons, there’s been a prevalent inclination to endorse candidates, primarily Republican candidates.
I don’t share Carter’s opinion of the pre-1979 Southern Baptist Convention. I think it’s been misguided, mistaken, ignorant and arrogant for its entire history, going all the way back to its roots in Puritanism. Be that as it may, what interested me in this interview was that Carter comes close to saying what I think any and every self-respecting Christian should be saying. Fundamentalists are an existential prevarication that turns the teaching of Jesus on their head. Fundamentalists are those who have said yes to Satan in the temptation in the wilderness.
Hi phronesis,
I share most of your views on Baptists in general. However, the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message(unamended original) was a fairly benign statement(if you consider any form of ‘literalist’ Christianity as benign) that basically outlined the literalist Christian faith at large with the Baptist slant thrown in, including such things as dunking in the water which are essentially Baptist requirements. In 1998 they amended it to include a statement defining marriage, which was the first official denominationwide statement of the new hard-right control of the Southern Baptist Convention. (I do not mean to imply that the SBC had not already fallen to hardliners, or that they had not made their positions officially known, just to say that this signified the total end of dissent within the SBC and that the ransacking of the 1963 Statement was begun.) In 2000, they totally re-did the entire Statement, which codified the total control by the fundamentalist dominionist Republican wing of the SBC.
So, the SBC did make a radical right turn, essentially starting in 1979 and culminating in 2000. Now, again, I’m not defending the SBC at any time in its history, but I am defending Carter’s decision to leave the SBC and remain more moderate in his views. I believe his assessment is correct.
As for my personal take on it, I thought the church had at least barely begun to rid itself of institutional racism in the mid-70’s and I believe that was part of the perceived ‘threat’ that led to the rise of the new hard right wingers in the SBC. There was a brief, very narrow window of time, during which the SBC was moving toward a slightly more liberal position. I was raised a Southern Baptist and found most of the preaching in the mainline churches here in Jackson to be relatively benign as a child in the late 60’s and the 70’s.
I toyed with returning to a SBC church in the early 90’s. At that time, the fruits of the hard right takeover were beginning to be very apparent so I ran away from the SBC as fast as I could. As an adult, literal fundamentalism was never my thing, so I was not in line with that part of the teachings of the church anyway. I’ll have a diary up tomorrow that explains my current position on religion, which is quite different today than it was back then. But I did want to respond to you as something of an insider like Carter was during the total and complete fall of the SBC to the Republican right wing radicals.
Thanks for the diary and the link.
Very inward and diagnositic diary. This really has to get out to the public; however, I do think this is becoming a most aware topic than one might think. The right thinks they have stollen our religion from us too and can use it against us. It is time we showed them they are the ones who are lost in the abyss.
Howdy Brenda!
You are right about taking back the Christian message.
As a result of our meeting (yay!) you probably know something of my current feelings on religion (which are way too complicated to summarize here (or there)), but tomorrow I will post a diary with a helpful tool for striking back against the hard right winger ‘Christians’ that I found recently. I just finished writing the first draft of the diary and I think I need to let it sit for a few hours then do the editing thing before I post it.
Hey, BN, so good to see ya. I will be watching for it. I just know it will be outstanding. Hope you have been handling the heat…I have not done so good with it. Hugs
Fortunately, I’ve a had a lot of indoor type of work to do, but the grass is getting a bit tall here, so I’m gonna have to brave the heat again soon!
Thanks for this diary, Phronesis. It is important to know what has happened to the SBC. Not all Southern Baptists are aware of what’s happened. The saving issue for Baptists is still congregational autonomy, that is, though there is a “convention”, their isn’t a hierarchy that imposes doctrinal orthodoxy on individual congregations and individual members. (Not, of course, that most pastors haven’t gone along with this turn to the right.) But here and there, there are churches that have refused to go along with the conflation of right wing politics and right wing fundatmentalism as being the same as Baptist beliefs.