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Renounces Southern Baptist Convention Painful Decision Reflects an Unease Among Moderate Baptists Lifelong Baptist at 76, Jimmy Carter Fears New Dogmatic Strains |
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By Jack Nichols
"It takes a great deal of courage and a huge store of insight to be willing to admit at age 76 that you've been holding spiritual stock in a wayward company, one with loonies who are in charge," said Randolfe Wicker, a gay movement pioneer. "President Carter has always been too honest and too good a man to pledge his spirit to the current Southern Baptist ideology." Carter called his having to withdraw from the Convention "a painful decision," but he based it, he told interviewers, on his having seen "an increasing inclination on the part of the Southern Baptist Convention leaders to be more rigid on what is a Southern Baptist and exclusionary of those who differ from them."
Since leaving the land's highest office, however, Jimmy Carter's persistent involvement in the ending of suffering—from one end of the globe to another-- have clearly served to establish him in the collective minds, even of America's non-Christian citizens, as a truly admirable human being. Carter, whose national agenda while in office included making changes in our sources of energy, had barely served a full year when, one day, he unashamedly made a startling announcement, without worrying about the resulting political fallout: "We must declare the moral equivalent of war against oil, " he said. These words were spoken in the immediate wake of America's first truly serious oil /gasoline shortage crisis. The oil crisis was behind him as he took office, but he knew it could only be a matter of time until it re-occurred with an added fury. Some observers have dated the beginning of what suddenly became a sustained media attack on Carter following his bold call for energy-change action. Though charged with 'weakness' by oil-rich Republicans, he succeeded, nevertheless, in keeping safe the over 50 U.S. hostages held by the fundamentalist ayatollah's regime, although, as if by design, the hostages were not allowed to be rescued or released during the greater period in which Carter was president. The captive hostages' fate gave plentiful mileage to Republicans in the 1980 election that was played up by an oily mainstream media to batter the Carter administration. The hostages were mysteriously released from captivity, however, on the very day that Ronald Reagan ascended to the presidency. "What question would you like to ask Carter right this very minute," this reporter asked of Randolfe Wicker. "I'd ask , 'What do you think today of two Texas oil men running together to be U.S. President and Vice-president on the Republican ticket?' " the veteran activist replied. |
