Our Endangered Values
America's Moral Crisis
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- USD 11.99
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- USD 11.99
Publisher Description
President Jimmy Carter offers a passionate defense of separation of church and state, warning that fundamentalists are deliberately blurring the lines between politics and religion.
In Our Endangered Values, Jimmy Carter offers a personal consideration of "moral values" as they relate to the important issues of the day. He puts forward a passionate defense of separation of church and state, and a strong warning about where the country is heading as the lines between politics and rigid religious fundamentalism are blurred.
Carter describes his reactions to recent disturbing societal trends that involve both religious and political worlds as they increasingly intertwine and include some of the most crucial and controversial issues of the day. Many of these matters are under fierce debate. They include preemptive war, women's rights, terrorism, civil liberties, homosexuality, abortion, the death penalty, science and religion, environmental degradation, nuclear arsenals, America's global image, fundamentalism, and the melding of religion and politics.
Sustained by his lifelong faith, Jimmy Carter assesses these issues in a balanced and courageous way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After several books on spirituality and homespun values (most recently Sharing Good Times), President Carter turns his attention to the political arena. He is gravely concerned by recent trends in conservatism, many of which, he argues, stem from the religious right's openly political agenda. Criticizing Christian fundamentalists for their "rigidity, domination and exclusion," he suggests that their open hostility toward a range of sinners (including homosexuals and the federal judiciary) runs counter to America's legacy of democratic freedom. Carter speaks eloquently of how his own faith has shaped his moral vision and of how he has struggled to reconcile his own values with the Southern Baptist church's transformation under increasingly conservative leadership. He also makes resonant connections between religion and political activism, as when he points out that the Lord's Prayer is a call for "an end to political and economic injustice within worldly regimes." Too much of the book, however, is a scattershot catalogue of standard liberal gripes against the current administration. Throwing in everything from human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib to global warming, Carter spreads himself too thin over talking points that have already been covered extensively.
