The power of unity

Church and State

One of the things that contributes to the problem is the increasingly blurred line between Church and State, which is changing the shape of the world. Americans see Europe as a continent where churches are dependent on government funding and in which there is very little activism. While Europeans increasingly see America as a fundamentalist religious state.

"My belief is that the overwhelming majority of Christians in America deplore the melding of the government with the right-wing or fundamentalist Christian groups," Carter says. "I don't think there's any doubt about that."

"It's a substantial minority of people who believe that’s a proper thing to do, but this is something our founding fathers deplored. Thomas Jefferson said specifically that we should build a wall between the Church and State. And of course I believe that this is something Jesus Christ addressed personally when He said, 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.' That doesn't mean that each individual person, whether they're in public office or not, shouldn't try to apply basic Christian principles to their activities and to their influence."

And Carter should know what he's talking about, since he held the ultimate public office. Although he says it wasn't a strain to maintain those principles. "It just came natural to me," he says. "I never had any sort of religious services in the White House, and when I did relate to my own denomination, which at that time was a moderate Southern Baptist Convention, it was a completely separate realm of interest and activity for me. And I would never have dreamed of using federal moneys - which is being done now - directly to finance the activities of churches."

Indeed, Carter is one of the only US presidents who never launched weapons against another nation, even though this was an extremely turbulent period in the Middle East. His constant goal was to mediate disputes between the nations, and he sees this new policy of pre-emptive war ("which means that we go to war with countries even when our own security is not directly threatened") as a serious shift from all of the presidents who served before George W Bush, including Bush's father.

Carter doesn't doubt President Bush's Christianity - nor that of Tony Blair - but he has been surprised by the way the relationship between Britain and America has lost its spark. He told Newsnight, "I think in the past there has been a very strong voice from London in the shaping of a common policy between the United States and Great Britain. This time though, no matter what kind of radical or ill-advised policy was proposed by the White House, it seems to me that automatically the Government of Great Britain would adopt the same policy without exerting its influence.

"In the Middle East peace process, in the case of the Lebanese-Israeli war of the recent past and certainly in the ill-advised abandonment of the war against terrorism to substitute the war in Iraq - in all of these policies, in my opinion, there's been a very disappointing reaction from the Government of Great Britain. I haven't seen the corrective effect of British disagreement with what the White House has proposed. It may have been there, but it hasn't been evident to the public."

Back on track

Since he's occupied the hot seat of power, Carter has clear suggestions to evangelical Christians both in America and Britain about how to get things back on track. "First of all," he says, "it would be a commitment to the principles that Christ espoused. We worship Him as the Prince of Peace, not the Prince of Pre-emptive War. And I have noticed that many leading Christians - I presume many of them call themselves evangelicals - have been among the most militant and warlike members of our society. Even before President Bush decided to invade Iraq, he had strong and public support from a number of more conservative Christians.

"The second thing is justice - that is, the commitment of individual human beings and their governments to utilise the power, the strength, the riches, the influence of a government to alleviate suffering among those who are most in need - to give them food, shelter, water.

"You know, it's embarrassing now to know that in Liberia, where we just conducted a successful election last year through the Carter Center, that half the people there are living on 50 cents [26p] or less a day. And half the people in the world live on less than $2 [just over £1] a day, whereas others are, you might say, wallowing in wealth. The average American family income is about $55,000 [£29,000] a year. Well, governments ought to make sure this enormous wealth is shared for the benefit of those in need."

For Carter, this is not just a political issue, it's profoundly spiritual. "One of the things that's obvious to me - we have programmes in 65 nations, 35 in Africa, and I'm over there often - is the high worth of these people whom we often denigrate," he says. "Because they're just as intelligent, just as hard-working, just as ambitious, they have family values that are just as good as mine, but we underestimate them and we ignore them. And the wider the division between rich and poor people, the less likely it is that the rich people are going to care about the poor people, or even notice they exist. That's another very crucial aspect of Christianity that is being ignored."

Carter believes this growing chasm between the rich and poor is the greatest challenge facing the world today. And it's the disunity within the Church that keeps us from playing our part in meeting this challenge. "The unnecessary divisions not only prevent our working together as a harmonious team," he says, "but also arouse misunderstanding, animosity, even hatred between Christians."

In order to heal these rifts, Carter believes we need to continue reassessing the basic causes of this division, and then working to find ways to alleviate tensions. He cites the Church of England as an example. "I know that with the ordination of a gay bishop there's been a big division all over the world in the [Anglican] Church, and the Archbishop is trying to resolve that successfully," Carter says. "But I think that to accommodate differences of opinion among Christians is a key factor that is not yet being done, and I think it's got to be done. OK, we have differences among us, but that’s not going to interrupt our love for one another or our common commitment to the realm of Christ."

• Faith and Freedom: The Christian Challenge for the World is published in London by Duckworth. The title of the U.S. version of the book was Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis.
• For more on the Carter Center's mission to "wage peace, fight disease and build hope", visit: www.cartercenter.org