Odd Cult Claims
Garry Wills says something odd in his review of Jimmy Carter’s new book.
I was surprised when [in 1976] so much was made of his religion as he ran for president. It began when he was asked, while visiting Baptist friends, if he thought of himself as “born again.” He answered yes – not surprisingly, since the Gospel of John (3:5) says that one must be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven, and Saint Paul says that baptism is being reborn into Christ (Romans 6:4). Reporters did not know this as a basic belief of Christians – they treated it as an odd cult claim.
Uh – yes. Because, what is the difference? What is the difference between a basic belief about what one has to do to ‘enter’ a nonexistent (or at any rate highly speculative) place, and an odd cult claim? I’ll tell you what the difference is. There isn’t one. I know everyone pretends otherwise. I know we’re supposed to pretend that as long as a religion has been around for some critical number of centuries (five? eight? fourteen? twenty? thirty?) then its basic beliefs are no longer odd cult claims but perfectly normal and routine and reasonable. But guess what – just adding years to a fantasy doesn’t make it any truer. Not even a little bit. Just adding years doesn’t have any effect of that kind at all. Really – the years are quite inert in that respect.
That led to his second-most-famous remark of the 1976 campaign. Carter was asked in a Playboy interview if he thought he was a holier-than-thou person because he was born again. He answered that, no, in fact he had committed lust in his heart – again quoting the New Testament (Matthew 5:28). That did it. For much of the Carter presidency, the line of some in the press (and, as I know well, in the academy) was that he was a religious nut.
Yes, I remember that. Well – same again. He was a religious nut. He was a lot more benign with it than most religious nuts, but that’s not the same thing as not being one at all.
His attendance at church was not announced; we reporters had to ferret that out by ourselves…Unlike most if not all modern presidents, he never had a prayer service in the White House. His problem, back then, was not that he paraded his belief but that he believed. All this can seem quaint now when professing religion is practically a political necessity, whether one believes or not. There is now an inverse proportion between religiosity and sincerity.
No, it doesn’t seem quaint now, it seems like – a lost paradise. A time when public religiosity in political candidates wasn’t considered either routine or mandatory – when in fact it was greeted with surprise and mirth. Those were the days.
The priority of politics is justice, and love goes beyond that. But love can help one find out what is just, without equating the two. That is why none of us, even those who believe in the separation of church and state, professes a separation of morality and politics. Insofar as believers – the great majority of Americans – derive many if not most of their moral insights from their beliefs, they must mingle religion and politics, again without equating the two.
That third sentence is a complete non sequitur, and that ‘even’ is an absurdity. Separation of church and state has nothing to do with separation of morality and politics, for the simple and blindingly obvious reason that church and morality are not synonymous, and are in fact independent of one another. Believers may derive most of their moral insights from their beliefs (or think they do, which comes to the same thing), but that’s mostly because the association is so often made. The moral insights don’t in fact depend on the beliefs, or if they do, they’re the ones that need doing away with, because they have no other justification. ‘God wants me to hate gays.’ Hmm – let’s drop that one, shall we?
It’s a good article in other ways though. As Southern Baptists go, I certainly prefer Carter’s kind to Pat Robertson’s kind. But I do miss the quaint old days when religion wasn’t compulsory.
Stewart, I fear that many would easily dismiss Carter’s opinions: remember, he was a Democrat.
How does that actually work? You’re a religious nut, so you judge people along religious lines, but when someone who would qualify religiously says something you don’t like you can dismiss him because his politics are wrong. Am I getting the hang of it? Is this the cause of the Democrats’ resentment that the Republicans have the biggest piece of the religious pie? I am, of course, not quite that naive, but I’ve never lived in the States and appreciate there are some nuances missing from my perception for which no amount of second-hand experience can compensate.
Yeah, they would, apparently. There’s a bit from the book in the Wills article, where he says just that – they went to the W. House and told him they were praying he would stop being a secular humanist.
I’m not a bit sure living in the States is much help. I can’t fathom people like that myself. They’re like Martians to me.
They’re also horrible nightmares.
I have a soft spot for Carter. we geordies are a push-over; let a President of the United States make Newcastle his first overseas stop, and then address the crowd with ‘Hawway the Lads’ and we’re putty in his hands.
Seriously, why is Carter so loathed in America? One of the most intelligent men to hold that office in the past few decades, a foreign policy that made some kind of sense, expanding national parks, SALT II, record numbers of women and minorities appointed to office, and a decent guy to boot. Yet even the Democrats seem to regard him as the mad wife in the attic.
OK, he was religious, but he didn’t shove it in your face and, besides, that’s an unspoken part of the job description.
Well he’s not universally loathed, Don! Most of the people who actually loathe him are the people who loathe absolutely anything one centimeter to the left of themselves – the twisted maniacs who clutter up the place, in short. But it’s possible to have reservations about him without being loony. I was put off him when he first campaigned by the ‘I’m an outsider’ shtick – as if being inexperienced and underqualified is a virtue, and should be talked about as such. I was intensely suspicious of that idea long before it reached its apotheosis in George ‘W’ Bush and his pal Brownie.
Plus the religion thing.
Exactly GT – the very point Dawkins was hammering away at in his recent TV programmes. Oddly, he seemed to end up having more time for the extremists than the fudgers as well. At least he knew where he stood with them!
Don – ah, the seventies ! Those hazy days when it was actually seen as a ‘bit iffy’ to be a religious nut… those were the days. I agree with you on Carter’s acheivements, although it would perhaps have made the world a tad safer later on if he had ignored the ‘Arc of Crisis’ bunkum that the geopolitics theorists who were already in situe in the Pentagon churned out when he took office – might have helped avoid the covert excesses of the initial “transition” of Afghanistan… it might not of course. Whatever, I can think right now of five C20 US presidents who I like a lot less (and that’s a lot for a Brit)
Sounds like natural history: “Good religious people are always on their guard against their most dangerous predators: better religious people.”
I may be wrong, but doesn’t Carter support a point of view that can be described as “absolute pacifism”? (i.e., war is never ever ever justified or necessary –> an idea which can cause more harm than good and can be regarded as a bit narcissistic).