With the release of his latest book, former American President Jimmy Carter speaks exclusively with idea editor Rich Cline about how evangelicalism should be good news for a troubled world...
From 1977 to 1981, Jimmy Carter was the 39th President of the United States, and he has since established himself as an active peacemaker and evangelical. The Carter Center in Atlanta was founded to promote democracy and human rights, monitoring elections, conducting peace negotiations and providing relief around the world. In 2002, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for "efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development".
This year, at age 82, he and his wife Rosalynn will help build their 24th house for Alliance member Habitat for Humanity in a part of India that's still recovering from the devastating tsunami.
Carter is clearly a man who puts faith into action. He has written some 20 books, including memoirs, Bible studies, poetry and even children’s books. But he has never offered a critical examination of the current political situation. Until now.
Faith and Freedom: The Christian Challenge for the World is an examination of how religion and politics are colliding around the planet as witnessed in the extremist actions of Islamic groups like al-Qaeda and the Christian fundamentalist response of President George W Bush. In his intimate writing style, Carter examines several of today’s hot potato topics, pointing Christians to the issues that really matter.
In his only other UK interview, with Newsnight in the week of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Carter talked about how America seems to have lost its moral compass in the wake of such devastating events.
"When we emulate the policies of terrorists by taking away the human rights of people," he said, "that gives the terrorists a victory and it weakens the strength of unity within the democratic or free nation."
And unity is Carter's rallying cry, the main reason why he finally broke his silence on the current political scene, which he has seen divide the Church in America. As he puts it, "I have a rare background in that I have been President of the United States of America and I'm a dedicated evangelical Christian who believes in the traditional values that were inculcated in me by my own father, who was a Sunday school teacher. So I have a voice that warranted the writing of this book. But that book encapsulates my deep concerns and my advice as well."
Bare essentials
The key issue for Carter is restoring unity within the Church. And to achieve this, he strongly believes that we need to base our definition of what it means to be a Christian or an evangelical on the essentials.
"my definition of evangelical is someone who accepts Jesus Christ as saviour"
Jimmy Carter
"I'm an evangelical," he says, "and my definition of evangelical is someone who accepts Jesus Christ as saviour and who's willing to spread the news about the advantages of worshipping Christ, and who makes an attempt to demonstrate in their own activities the character of Christ." In a nutshell: "Someone who reaches out to others to spread the word about Jesus."
Division almost always comes when we add to this definition, refusing to accept certain kinds of people in fellowship, for example, or stressing a need to support a military action - essentially we’re interpreting the Bible to support our own prejudices.
"I've been teaching nine lessons from 1 Corinthians these last nine weeks, as a matter of fact," he says. "And this letter from Paul to the Corinthians covered that specifically. He said that we have the perfect right to be individuals and to exercise our own human freedom and individuality, but overwhelmingly we need to submerse those different opinions in order to achieve unity among Christians. Otherwise the early Church would be destroyed. I would guess that, around the world, the Christian Church is more deeply divided now than it has been at any previous time in history."
As evidence, he points to splits in the Church at large, and also within denominations. "And they have become divided because of a direct violation of what St Paul advocated," Carter says. "He pointed out some very important issues in those early days. Do you have to become a Jew first and become circumcised before you can become a Christian? That split the Church. Can you eat the meat that’s been offered to idols, particularly to the goddess Aphrodite in Corinth? How do you observe baptism, what is the meaning of baptism? Paul said, 'Look, these things are important, and you can disagree on them, but don't let them divide you from other Christians.' That’s the same thing as homosexuality and abortion and the death penalty now."
