Jimmy Carter’s latest book offers lessons in faith

GREG BLUESTEIN

Asso­ci­ated Press

ATLANTA — Jimmy Carter may never have been pres­i­dent if he didn’t go square dancing.

The Geor­gia Demo­c­rat cred­its a rural square dance club he joined in 1953 with help­ing him win a state Sen­ate seat by a scant 66 votes.

“If I hadn’t received sup­port from our square-dancing friends, I would have lost and never become a state sen­a­tor,” he wrote in his lat­est book, “Through the Years with Jimmy Carter.” ”And if that had occurred, I never would have run for office again.”

Carter has penned 26 dif­fer­ent books, includ­ing child­hood mem­oirs, trea­tises on the Mid­dle East and accounts of his pres­i­dency. But none are like his lat­est, which offers 366 devo­tion­als, each with a bib­li­cal pas­sage, a per­sonal story and an orig­i­nal prayer.

The one-page items are sprin­kled with lessons Carter gleaned from more than 30 years of teach­ing Sun­day school classes and anec­dotes from his coun­try upbring­ing to his ascent to the White House and beyond.

“The total­ity of my teach­ing presents a view of a lay per­son. I’m not a the­olo­gian,” he said in an inter­view. “I’m extract­ing real mes­sages from the Bible or from Chris­t­ian faith that apply to daily exis­tence and that’s applic­a­ble whether you’re a farmer, a jour­nal­ist, a lawyer, a teacher or a polit­i­cal office holder.”

In the book, Carter is open about strug­gles over his own faith. He writes that he felt “despon­dent and alien­ated from God” after los­ing his first bid for Georgia’s gov­er­nor in 1966, and said his wife Ros­alynn went through a rough patch when he lost to Ronald Rea­gan in 1980. But he said he retrenched dur­ing those dark times and worked to remind him­self of the role reli­gion has played in his life.

“If there is no basis for our faith … then how do we account for the pres­ence of Jesus Christ in hun­dreds of mil­lions of lives across the globe?” he wrote in the book. “How could Jesus still be alive to me? How could so many hearts be touched and minds stim­u­lated by Jesus to seek ulti­mate truths about life and the world around us?”

His book casts some polit­i­cal debates with reli­gious over­tones. He con­demns the Patriot Act and water­board­ing, writ­ing that Chris­tians “can­not keep silent just because the injus­tice doesn’t affect our own fam­i­lies or friends.” And he said it would be “fool­ish” for the devout to deny global warming.

“While we may dis­agree on the causes or rate of global warm­ing, shouldn’t we all agree that we have a respon­si­bil­ity to take care of the Earth?”

Carter is also can­did about some of his short­com­ings, such as his lack of patience, his pen­chant for jeal­ousy and his fights with his wife over triv­ial issues. One year, when he for­got her birth­day, he hastily scrawled out a note to give to her, and it turned out to be one of her favorite gifts. It read: “I promise that I will never make another unfa­vor­able com­ment about tardiness.”

Spread through­out the book are his­tory lessons, with insights over the ancient ten­sions between Jews and Chris­tians, the roles of politi­cians and prophets in Bib­li­cal times, and the impact of mar­tyrs and apos­tles on Christianity’s spread across the globe. He tells those sto­ries with a healthy dose of jokes he’s heard from the pul­pit and the White House.

In one pas­sage, he said his brother Billy was on his death bed when he told a friend he had car­ried out a long affair with the friend’s wife.

“His friend’s face dropped. The man gulped a cou­ple of times and then Billy laughed and said, ‘No, I’m just jok­ing.’ That was Billy.’”

In another pas­sage, Carter men­tions a USA Today poll ques­tion that probes read­ers on what they would ask if they came face-to-face with God. Carter didn’t say what his answer would be in the book, but in an inter­view he said he would ask about Christ’s role in the cre­ation of the uni­verse. He said he would not, how­ever, waste a ques­tion ask­ing about life after death.

“I’m sup­posed to have com­plete faith in life after death as a Chris­t­ian who has, I would guess, as strong faith in Christ as pos­si­ble,” he said, adding: “I’d rather be surprised.”

Carter said he hopes the book will help send the mes­sage that “God calls us to live out our faith.” He urges read­ers to keep their reli­gion in mind, reach out to new peo­ple and enjoy an expan­sive life. After all, he writes, he never would have guessed that square danc­ing would have helped him win an election.

“Ros­alynn and I enjoyed the square danc­ing but we’ve prob­a­bly enjoyed a lot more what’s hap­pened since,” he wrote. “You just never know.”

Posted by AP News on Jan 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.